What I learned from keeping a food journal for two weeks

One of our recent assignments in my Ayurvedic Health Counseling program was to keep a journal for two weeks tracking the state of our agni (digestion) and ama (toxins in the body). If you ever work with an Ayurvedic coach or practitioner, you may be asked to do something similar to help the practitioner understand what is causing your imbalances. I found the process helpful and it allowed me to make some changes in my eating habits that quickly had me feeling better. I want to share some tips for how you could keep your own food journal, some things to watch for, and some ways it might help you. I also want to share who should not do this practice. 

Potential benefits of keeping a food journal

• Allows you to see any food sensitivities you may not have been aware of
• Allows you to better understand the state of your digestion
• Allows you to notice what times of the day you normally eat, how long you wait between meals, and what affect this may have on your digestion
• Allows you to make connections between food choices or digestive capacity and other health symptoms
• Can help you become aware of emotional eating or other reasons you eat vs. true hunger
• May inspire you to make new choices to support your health
• Will be a great resource for you to share if you work with a health coach, nutritionist or Ayurvedic practitioner, and can help them understand how to serve you best

Potential risks of keeping a food journal

Always have a clear intention when keeping a food journal. I want to emphasize that this exercise is not appropriate for everyone. If you have a history of any eating disorders, or currently follow or have a history with extreme or restrictive diets, a food journal is probably not for you. If you feel like tracking your food would bring out critical, perfectionistic or harmful tendencies, skip it! The goal in Ayurveda is to eat with joy, love and awareness, and a food journal may or may not be helpful for you in this goal. 

Also, this food journal is not about counting calories or keeping a list of “bad” vs. “good” foods. The idea of the journal is not that you are trying to eat a certain way or change what you eat while keeping the journal. It is to track your normal food habits and digestion and see what you notice. Please do not use it as a way to punish yourself for your choices, rather approach it with an attitude of curiosity and a desire to learn and grow.

What to track in your food journal

When tracking your food and digestion, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of the four types of agni (digestion/metabolism) classified in Ayurveda. 

• Vishama Agni/Variable, irregular – Associated with Vata dosha, some symptoms of vishama agni are an irregular appetite, indigestion, gas, and constipation. 
• Tikshna Agni/high, hypermetabolism – Associated with Pitta dosha, signs of tikshna agni are a strong appetite, heartburn, acid indigestion, and loose stools or diarrhea. 
• Manda Agni/low, hypometabolism – Associated with Kapha dosha, signs of manda agni include a low appetite, slow or sluggish digestion and elimination, and feelings of heaviness or sluggishness after eating. 
• Sama agni/balanced digestion – With balanced agni, you should experience a consistent appetite with no unpleasant digestive symptoms, and bowel movements around the same time each day, that are soft yet well-formed, and pass easily! 

To track my own agni, I wrote down everything I ate in a day, the time I ate it, and any digestive symptoms that showed up afterwards (gas, bloating, indigestion). I also tracked the details of my bowel movements each day (if you’re not used to paying attention to this it may seem weird at first – but it can hold such great information about the state of your health!) Keep these four types of digestion in mind as you track your own sign and symptoms. Can you tell which best describes you? 

Ama is the Sanskrit word for toxins in the body. In Ayurveda there are many ways to look for signs of ama, including noticing your tongue coating, body odor, and consistency/odor of bowel movements. Ama is a deep concept, and I would recommend working with an Ayurvedic practitioner if you want to learn more about how ama may be showing up in your body. For the purpose of keeping a food journal, simply pay attention to any unusual or unpleasant symptoms. Note any headaches, acne or other skin flare-ups, and mucus or congestion. When you look at these symptoms alongside the foods you are eating, you may start to see some connections. 

Lastly, try to track not only what you eat but how you eat. This is so important in Ayurveda! Are you eating in a rush as you head to work, or relaxing on your porch? What is your emotional state while you’re eating? Start to see if you can notice any link between how you are eating, and the state of your digestion.

My takeaways from my food journal exercise

I want to share some of my own takeaways from keeping my food journal for two weeks. This is just to give you an example of the kind of things that might come up for you – remember that this is a very personal process and your takeaways won’t  be the same as mine! 

I consider myself to have a combination of high and variable agni. I am pretty much always hungry, and need to eat regularly and pretty frequently throughout the day. But my elimination tends to be more on the variable side (gas, constipation). One thing I quickly noticed when I started keeping my food journal is that I was always experiencing some symptoms of gas, bloating or slight indigestion around 5pm. My habit was to have an afternoon snack around 4pm, so I paid attention to what I was eating and tried different things to see if I could get rid of these symptoms. But no matter what I ate for a snack, I seemed to always get these digestive symptoms in the hour or so after eating. 

It occurred to me that I was experiencing these vata-type symptoms during the vata time of day (for more background on the doshas and time of day read this). To get rid of the vata symptoms, I thought I would experiment with not eating anything during this vata time (from about 2pm-6pm). For me, this meant pushing my lunch a little later and my dinner a little earlier. This worked beautifully. Instead of having an afternoon snack I started having a cup of tea with vata-balancing herbs (like cumin, coriander, fennel, licorice or cinnamon) around 4pm, then having dinner a couple hours later. I felt like this better allowed me to fully digest my lunch and work up a true appetite for dinner. The afternoon indigestion completely went away when I made this change, and my digestive fire was strong enough by the evening to digest dinner without any unpleasant symptoms. 

Another interesting thing I noticed was that I was tending to eat a little too much (for my body) for dinner most nights. Most of us think of dinner as the largest meal of the day, and I always savor the time to be with my husband and eat a nice meal together. But according to Ayurveda, our digestive fire is strongest during midday, and lunch should be our biggest meal, followed by a lighter dinner. Not everyone wants to eat vegetable broth for dinner every night though (and neither do I!) However I noticed I felt better by just eating a slightly smaller portion of whatever we made for dinner. In other words, the heaviness of the food wasn’t so much the problem as the amount I was eating. I like to take a walk after dinner, and I noticed I could really tell the difference if I’d eaten a little too much; I had a feeling of heaviness and some stomach cramping. But after a slightly smaller portion, I was feeling energized and light. 

Again, I want to make the distinction that this is not about restrictive eating or portion control. This is not following an outside rule of how much you should eat per meal. It is all about listening to your own body and eating what feels best to you. Paying attention to the “first burp” is something I’ve learned from Ayurveda that has been super helpful. If you slow down while you’re eating and become aware, you may notice that your stomach releases an air bubble, a small burp, when your stomach is close to full. Stopping at the first burp usually feels good to me, rather than always eating everything on my plate without stopping to notice if I’m full or not. The beauty of this signal is that it will always be attuned to your body. There will be times when you can eat much more than others, based on time of day, activity you’ve engaged in, even hormones and time of the month. We should not always be eating the same amount at every meal, and with awareness you can learn to trust how much your body needs. 

A last takeaway was something I really already knew, but seem to still need to be reminded of. I have always struggled with acne, and the food journal allowed me to see correlations between certain foods and breakouts that followed. Turns out sugar, dairy and wheat are still not doing my skin any favors… oh well! (I want to get into more details about my journey with acne, and what I’ve learned from an Ayurvedic approach, in another post – so look for that next week!)

That’s it for my food journal takeaways! This week I’m no longer keeping my journal, but I’m still implementing the things I learned and feeling empowered to make choices that support my digestion. If you try this exercise, I would recommend only keeping it up for a week or two – there’s no reason to always write down everything we eat! Remember that the goal is not perfection or rigidity, but to eat with more joy and confidence. If you decide to experiment with your own food journal, I’d love to hear what you learn!