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Food Diary for Diabetics

Having diabetes creates a need for carefully monitoring your lifestyle, including your diet and how it affects your blood sugar. Creating a food diary is an important exercise for diabetics who are looking to improve their health. Your food diary can help you monitor how what you are eating is affecting your health, and catch any patterns that may be harmful to your health.

  1. Nutritionist

    • Before you create a food diary, meet with a nutritionist about your diabetes. The nutritionist can look at your medical history, age, weight and personal health goals to help you come up with a plan for eating that will be good for you and help you to manage your diabetes. Diabetes is a health condition that alters the food pyramid recommended for most people, so seeing a nutritionist is a step that you do not want to skip.

    Create a Checklist

    • As part of your food diary, you will want to create a checklist of food groups and servings that you need to eat each day. On your computer, create a line for each food item, along with a space for you to enter in the serving size you ate, its calories, carbs, sodium and other vital nutrients. Leave a few blank lines on your checklist so you can enter in foods that you might eat that do not fall into your recommended food guidelines.

    Other Information

    • Below the checklist for foods you need to consume each day, include checklists for three meals and three snacks for each day. Next to each line, leave spaces where you can enter total calories for each meal and snack, as well as total carbs for each meal and snack. Below your meal and snack totals, create a line where you can record your total calories and carbs for the day. Finally, leave a space at the bottom of the page where you can record all of your blood sugar readings for the day.

    Fit to a Page and Print

    • Once you have created a document with all the information you need to enter each day, play with the font and margins so that you can fit everything on one page. This will make your diabetic food diary much easier to follow. Next, print out one copy of your food diary and bring it to a local printer. Have them print 365 copies for you and bind them with a cover to form a bound diary.

    Use Your Diary

    • Use your food diary every day to track your diet and corresponding blood sugar levels. Review your diary every week or two to look for patterns; see when your blood sugar is best and when it is worst. Make note of your observations, and bring your diabetic food diary to every nutritionist and medical appointment you attend. This will help your health care professionals to make suggestions and help you better manage your diabetes and your health.

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