A food diary to print, free and without signing up. Pick a day per page or a whole week on one sheet, choose whether you want calories, protein or no numbers at all, then print it or download the PDF.
DateWeight
| Time | What I ate and drank | Amount | kcal | Protein g | Carbs g | Fat g | Hunger |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breakfast | |||||||
| Lunch | |||||||
| Dinner | |||||||
| Snacks | |||||||
| Total |
Water, one circle per glass
Hunger before eating: 1 not hungry, 3 ready to eat, 5 starving
Notes: sleep, mood, how the day went
Week of
| Day | Breakfast | Lunch | Dinner | Snacks | kcal | Protein g | Carbs g | Fat g | Water |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | |||||||||
| Tuesday | |||||||||
| Wednesday | |||||||||
| Thursday | |||||||||
| Friday | |||||||||
| Saturday | |||||||||
| Sunday |
Notes: sleep, mood, how the day went
Prefer it on your phone? Ampsu is the same diary, with barcodes, label photos and the adding up done for you.
Try the app versionWrite things down as you go rather than at night, when the handful of crisps and the milk in your coffee have long gone. Everything counts: drinks, sauces, the oil in the pan and the bites you take while cooking. They’re the easiest to forget and often the part that changes the total.
For the amount, use whatever you have: grams from a pack, spoons, slices, “a plate”. It doesn’t have to be exact to be useful. Fill in a whole week if you can, weekend included, because Saturday rarely looks like Tuesday.
If you want calories next to the food, these rough values cover the things people eat most often. Packs carry their own numbers, and for a homemade dish the recipe calculator works out a portion. Fat is where the guesses go furthest wrong: a tablespoon of oil is about 120 kcal, and a pan often gets two.
| Food | Portion | Grams | kcal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 1 tablespoon | 14 g | 120 |
| Butter | 1 teaspoon | 5.0 g | 35 |
| Wholemeal bread | 1 slice | 35 g | 90 |
| Pasta, cooked | 1 plate | 200 g | 315 |
| Rice, cooked | 1 cup | 150 g | 195 |
| Egg | 1 medium | 50 g | 70 |
| Banana | 1 medium | 120 g | 105 |
| Apple | 1 medium | 150 g | 80 |
| Almonds | 1 handful | 30 g | 175 |
| Cheese, Gouda | 1 slice | 20 g | 70 |
| Semi-skimmed milk | 1 glass, 200 ml | – | 105 |
| Red wine | 1 glass, 150 ml | – | 125 |
| Beer | 1 pint, 500 ml | – | 215 |
Read the week back in one go. Most people spot something quickly: a long gap after a small lunch followed by a big evening, snacks that arrive at the same time every day, a weekend that adds up to two weekdays, or drinks that make up more of the total than expected.
Pick one thing to change, not five. Writing it all down does part of the work by itself: in a trial with 1,685 adults, habits like keeping food records explained most of the difference in how much people lost, and the people who kept more records lost more.
If a doctor or dietitian asked you for a food diary, they often want three days: two weekdays and one weekend day. Use the version without numbers unless they asked for calories, write down brands where you know them, and bring the sheets along.
No. The “no numbers” version is just what you ate, when, how much and how hungry you were. That alone shows most patterns, and a dietitian will often prefer it.
A week or two is usually enough to see your patterns. Past that, paper gets tedious, which is where an app that does the adding up earns its keep.
Yes. The PDFs are A4, so choose “fit to page” in the print dialog, or print straight from this page, which follows whatever paper your printer has.
Not to start. Estimates are fine for spotting patterns, and weighing a few things you eat often, once, makes your guesses better for good.