Getting started · about 4 minutes
Your first week with a food & poo diary.
A useful diary is one you can keep returning to. Start with a small record of what happened, then add the details that matter to you.
This is a guide to using EatNPoo, a food, drink, bowel movement and symptom diary for iPhone. It isn’t a diet plan or medical advice.
1. Begin with the basics.
Use the Food, Drink, Poo and Symptom buttons to record an event and its time. If you’re adding something later, change the entry’s date and time to when it happened.
A short meal description such as “porridge with banana” is enough to begin. You can add portions, ingredients or notes if you want the extra context. Optional fields can stay blank.
2. Record what you observed.
For a bowel movement, choose the closest Bristol stool type from the pictures and descriptions. If you can’t decide, select Not sure. The choice describes form; it doesn’t assign a diagnosis.
Symptoms are separate entries. Choose a common symptom or type your own description, and add a severity if you want to record one. Keep notes factual and useful to your future self.
An empty day means nothing was recorded. Use No poo this day only when you want to explicitly confirm that there was no bowel movement. Adding a poo entry clears that confirmation.
3. Make repeat entries easier.
Open a food or drink entry and choose Save as favourite. Next time, select Favourites from the logging form to reuse it with the new entry’s time.
Water shortcuts fill a drink form. Home Screen widgets and app-icon shortcuts also open forms; choose Save when you’re ready to add the entry. Optional reminders can help you return to the diary at a time you choose.
4. Look back without jumping to conclusions.
History lets you search entries across all dates. Review shows descriptive counts for a selected date range, including symptom entries and Bristol types.
A food and a symptom appearing near each other does not establish that one caused the other. EatNPoo’s summaries describe the records you entered. They do not identify food triggers or recommend changing your diet or treatment.
If you want to discuss your diary at an appointment, export a PDF report. Choose what to share and speak with a qualified healthcare professional before making medical decisions.
5. Save a backup before you need one.
Open Settings → Backup and restore → Save full backup. JSON is the format EatNPoo can restore; CSV and PDF are for reading or sharing.
Your diary is excluded from automatic device backups. We don’t keep a server copy. Save a JSON backup before changing phones or deleting the app, and check a restored diary before removing the old copy.
On My iPhone keeps the backup on the same phone. A same-phone backup can’t recover a phone that is lost. To keep a separate copy, deliberately choose a transfer or storage destination you trust; that destination’s privacy practices apply.
A small end-of-week check.
- Are entries dated and named in a way you understand?
- Would favourites or an optional reminder make logging easier?
- Have you saved a JSON backup somewhere you can recover it?
- Is there anything in the diary you want to discuss with a healthcare professional?
You don’t need to fill every field or reach a particular score. There’s no health score to chase in EatNPoo.
Need a hand?
Read the help guide, or email my2patterns@gmail.com with a question. Diary records are never attached automatically.