Food Journal and Meal Tracker Spreadsheet

About this template

This food journal is for anyone trying to work out which foods sit well and which do not. Log each meal with up to three foods from your own list, rate how you felt an hour or two later, and the file ranks every food by it. There is no calorie counting.

Please read: This is a tracker tool only, not financial, tax, legal, medical or any other professional advice or advisory service. It records and calculates what you enter; you are solely responsible for checking all figures, rates, dates and results and for every decision you make. By purchasing, downloading or using it, you accept these terms (your statutory consumer rights are not affected).

The dashboard

Choose any food on your list and the page follows. Everything on it fills itself from your meals.

• Meals logged, or the meals that included the food picked
• Energy, bloating and mood after eating, eight weeks side by side
• A meal map of the last two weeks, shaded by how each meal went
• How you felt after each food, next to your usual
• Breakfast to snacks, and morning to late, compared
• Meals past the levels you set on Setup, and the foods you log most
• Glasses of water a day for four weeks, against your goal

How each meal sat

Each row of this food diary holds the meal, the time, what you ate and up to three foods from your own list. An hour or two later you score energy, bloating and mood out of five, with a note if something stood out. It works as a simple meal tracker and a food and mood log in one.

Every food, ranked

The Food Patterns tab lists every food by how bloated you felt after it, with energy and mood beside it, most bloating first. Each food gets a verdict: Watch it, Sits well or In between. That makes it a useful bloating tracker without any guesswork on your part.

By meal, time of day and day

Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks are compared side by side, as are morning and late night meals. The Days tab fills itself in with one row a day: the meals, the day's scores and your water against the goal, so the daily food log builds as you go.

Six connected tabs

Start Here, Setup, Meals, Food Patterns, Days and Dashboard.

Light and dark editions

Every download includes a light edition and a dark edition. Every tab is restyled, not only the dashboard, and both run on the same formulas, so you simply pick the look you prefer. Each edition comes filled with a worked example and as a blank copy, in Excel and in Google Sheets.

Works with

• Microsoft Excel 2016, 2019, 2021 and Microsoft 365, on Windows and Mac, and LibreOffice
• Google Sheets with a free Google account. The Google Sheets version is a real workbook you take a copy of, not a PDF with a link in it.
• No dynamic arrays, no macros, no add-ins and no subscription

What you download

• Light edition: the Excel workbook filled with a worked example (six weeks of meals, 169 of them, with water every day), and a blank one
• Dark edition: the same two files in the dark design
• The instruction guide, which has one-click links to the Google Sheets versions (light and dark, filled and blank)
• The terms of use as a PDF

Your files are ready to download as soon as payment clears. They are for personal and business use on your own devices, so please do not share or resell them. Questions before or after you buy? Use our contact page and we will help.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use it in Google Sheets as well as Excel?

Yes. You get Excel workbooks for Excel 2016 or later on Windows or Mac, and the instruction guide has one-click links to copy the Google Sheets versions with a free Google account.

Do I have to count calories?

No. There is no calorie counting. You log what you ate and rate energy, bloating and mood out of five afterward.

How does it decide a food might not suit me?

It ranks every food by how bloated you felt after it, with energy and mood alongside, and marks it Watch it, Sits well or In between. It records your own ratings and does not give medical advice.

Can I track water?

Yes. The Days tab shows glasses of water each day against your goal, and the dashboard charts four weeks of it.

What is the difference between the light and dark editions?

Only the look. Every tab is restyled with the same formulas, and both come with every download.