Food journaling is often the missing piece of the ADHD puzzle.
Often parents who have already cleaned up their child’s diet by removing gluten, dairy, and soy come to me and say things like this: “My child had a complete meltdown yesterday, and I can’t figure out what triggered it! He hadn’t eaten anything out of the ordinary that morning, so I don’t think it was food.”
What these parents often don’t realize is that bodies can react to foods sometimes several days after eating them!!
What that means is that your child’s meltdown might not be because of the foods they ate THAT day or even the day before. The meltdown could have been triggered by foods that they ate earlier in the week!
Same with stomach aches or other symptoms.
There are different types of inflammatory responses. Some of them are immediate; others later down the road.
So how do you know what actually is triggering behavior or other symptoms of ADHD?
Food journals!
By keeping a detailed food journal, you can start to recognize patterns.
If every time your child eats bananas, for instance, they have a symptom two days later, you can try to remove bananas temporarily and see if the symptom improves.
My team and I have put together a free printable for you to help!
It’s a 3 day food journal, where you can record the foods your child eats, as well as any symptoms that go along with it.
✍️ If you’d like this 3 day food journal, click here to grab it! ✍️
P.S. You might be wondering if there’s a surefire way to know if a food is causing an ADHD symptom. Good news! There sure is. With functional lab testing, we can determine exactly which foods are causing inflammatory responses. Detailed food journaling can help you figure out which foods are LIKELY causing issues, but if you want to know FOR CERTAIN, lab testing is the way to go.
If you’d like to know more about functional lab testing, here are two next steps:
1) Watch this video where I share all about my fav lab tests.
2) to discuss if this is the right next step for you.
