--- title: "Food diary for headaches: find your real triggers | Moodwell" description: "What to log in a headache food diary, how long to keep it, how to tell a trigger from a coincidence, and why GLP-1 dose timing belongs in the same record." url: "https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches" --- 1. [Home](https://www.moodwell.ai/) 2. [The Whole Picture](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture) 3. [Everyday tracking](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking) 4. Rule out the rest before you blame the food [Everyday tracking](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking)8 min read # Food diary for headaches: how to find your real triggers What to log in a headache food diary, how long to keep it, how to tell a trigger from a coincidence, and why GLP-1 dose timing belongs in the same record. [![Portrait of Priya Raman, an AI coach persona](https://www.moodwell.ai/images/coaches/priya.webp)By Priya RamanMoodwell AI coach · Observant and analytical](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/voices/priya) Archive: Nov 6, 2026Updated Nov 6, 2026 ![A ceramic plate with squash, greens, and beans beside a folded green napkin](https://www.moodwell.ai/images/picture/food.webp) Editorial illustration In this article [The short answer](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#the-short-answer)[What should a headache food diary record?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#what-to-log)[Why does GLP-1 dose timing belong in the same record?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#dose-timing)[How long should you keep the diary?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#how-long)[How do you match a headache to a meal?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#timing)[How do you tell a trigger from a coincidence?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#grading)[What mistakes make a headache diary misleading?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#mistakes)[What should you do once you have a suspect food?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#retest)[Can one app hold your food diary, doses and headaches?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#in-moodwell)[When should you see a doctor, and what should you bring?](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#doctor)[Sources & further reading](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#sources)[Questions, answered](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-diary-for-headaches#article-questions) Copy article link Less app-switching. More context. Meet the four layers of Moodwell.[Explore the app](https://www.moodwell.ai/product) The short answer ## How do you use a food diary to find headache triggers? Log what you ate and drank, when, how you slept, and when each headache started and how bad it was, plus your medication and GLP-1 dose timing. Keep it for at least four weeks. Then test one suspect food at a time: leave it out, see whether headaches change, and bring it back once to check. A food diary for headaches works only if it records the day around the meal, not just the meal. “Tuna sandwich” tells you nothing three weeks later, when you are trying to work out whether it was the tuna, the bread, a short night or the day after your injection. On a GLP-1 the day has more moving parts than usual. Appetite drops, meals get skipped, you may drink less, and headache is itself a common side effect of the medication. A diary helps you separate those, as long as you read it carefully. ## What should a headache food diary record? [MedlinePlus advises](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003024.htm) keeping a headache diary and reviewing it with your provider. For each headache, record what you ate and drank in the 24 hours before, how long you slept the night before, and when the pain started. On a GLP-1, add a few more fields. Seven fields worth logging | Field | What to write | | --- | --- | | Food and drink | The meal plus anything notable: aged cheese, cured meat, alcohol, caffeine, sweeteners | | Time | When you ate, not just which meal | | Headache | Start time, severity, how long it lasted | | Medication | Injection day and time, plus any pain relief you took | | Sleep | Hours, and whether it was broken | | Fluids | A rough daily total is enough | | Stress or mood | One word, or a quick check-in | Skipped meals belong in the record too. [MedlinePlus Magazine lists skipping meals](https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/10-common-migraine-triggers-and-how-to-cope-with-them) among common migraine triggers, and on a GLP-1 a skipped meal is easy to miss because you weren’t hungry. ## Why does GLP-1 dose timing belong in the same record? Headache is listed among the common side effects in the [Wegovy prescribing information](https://www.novo-pi.com/wegovy.pdf). So a headache the day after an injection may have nothing to do with lunch. GLP-1 medications also change how much and when you eat and drink, which can mimic a food trigger or hide one. Writing the injection day next to the meals is what lets you check. If your headaches cluster in the day or two after a dose, whatever you ate, that is a pattern to bring to your prescriber rather than a food to cut. Don’t move or skip a dose to test it yourself. ## How long should you keep the diary? Plan on four to eight weeks. On a weekly injection, that covers at least four dose cycles, which is enough to see whether headaches repeat on the same day of the cycle or follow particular foods. Wait for several headaches before you judge anything. With two or three, one coincidence can look like a pattern. Keep logging, and keep logging the days without a headache too, because those are what clear a food. ## How do you match a headache to a meal? The meal nearest the pain is not automatically the cause. The [American Migraine Foundation’s diet guidance](https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/diet/) says a food is a plausible trigger only if the headache comes within 24 hours of eating it, at most. So check each headache against everything from that day and the day before. Record each headache as its own timestamped entry, with a start time and severity, rather than a note at the bottom of the day. That makes it easy to count later. ## How do you tell a trigger from a coincidence? A coincidence happens once. A trigger repeats: you eat it, a headache follows within the window, and it happens again. For each food you suspect, count three things: how often you ate it, how often a headache followed within 24 hours, and whether something else could explain those days, such as poor sleep, a skipped meal, alcohol or an injection day. - Likely: a headache followed most times you ate it, inside the window, on days with no other obvious explanation. - Possible: it lined up two or three times, or only on days that had another explanation too. Keep it on the list, but don’t change your diet over it yet. - Cleared: you ate it several times with no headache, or the headaches came outside the window. These grades are a way to organize your own notes, not a diagnosis. The test that settles it is the remove-and-reintroduce step below. ## What mistakes make a headache diary misleading? Blaming a whole food group. Aged cheese and cured meats are the classic suspects, usually blamed on tyramine or nitrates. But the American Migraine Foundation notes that most studies have not found tyramine linked to migraine attacks. Record the specific product, and treat the chemical explanation as a guess. Missing the confounders. On a GLP-1, skipped meals, low fluid intake, short sleep and the injection itself can all land within a day of whatever you ate. Check each headache entry for those before you point at the food. Changing several things at once. If you start cutting foods, add a supplement or change your routine mid-diary, you can’t tell what made the difference. Change one thing at a time, and log the change itself. ## What should you do once you have a suspect food? Test it, one food at a time. The American Migraine Foundation suggests limiting the food in question for about four weeks while you keep the diary, watching headache frequency and severity. If headaches drop, reintroduce it once in a normal portion, on an ordinary day, and log the next 24 hours. If the headache comes back, you have real evidence. If it doesn’t, the food was probably standing near the scene. Don’t cut several foods at once. You are already eating less on a GLP-1, and every food you drop narrows the options for getting enough protein. ## Can one app hold your food diary, doses and headaches? Moodwell keeps the pieces in one account. Food goes in the Nutrition diary by description, photo, voice or manual entry, and you can log water there too. In Health, headache is one of the preset symptoms, recorded with a severity from 1 to 5, a time and a note, beside your GLP-1 dose history. Mood check-ins in Mindfulness let you pick the day’s main influence, and sleep is one of the options. If you use Health Connect on Android, sleep can sync in from your watch or phone. ![Moodwell daily insights for September 17, with recorded activity and a day summary.](https://www.moodwell.ai/images/product/insight.png) Moodwell Daily Insights lays out one day in time order: synced sleep, meals, weigh-ins and a mood check-in. [Daily Insights](https://www.moodwell.ai/features/daily-insights) lays out a day’s records in time order, which is what you need when you check a headache against the meals before it. Moodwell won’t find the trigger for you. It doesn’t correlate food with symptoms, and it keeps medication records out of its cross-layer analysis on purpose. The counting is still yours. **Where Moodwell falls short** Foods aren’t tagged by ingredient or compound, so you can’t filter for “aged” or “contains MSG”. There is no data export, so a summary for your doctor is something you write from what you see. And there is no free plan: after a 7-day trial it costs $9.99 a month or $99 a year on the web. ## When should you see a doctor, and what should you bring? **Get help first for these** A sudden, severe headache, a headache with fever or a stiff neck, vision changes, weakness, confusion or trouble speaking, a headache that keeps getting worse over a day, or a headache after a head injury needs medical attention, not a diary. So does a new pattern of headaches after starting or changing a GLP-1 dose. For a routine appointment, bring one page rather than the whole diary. List each suspect food with how many times you ate it and how many times a headache followed within 24 hours. Note whether headaches cluster after injections, and what happened when you left a food out and brought it back. Follow the evidence ## Sources & further reading 1. [MedlinePlus: Headache](https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003024.htm) 2. [MedlinePlus Magazine: 10 common migraine triggers and how to cope with them](https://magazine.medlineplus.gov/article/10-common-migraine-triggers-and-how-to-cope-with-them) 3. [American Migraine Foundation: Diet and headache control](https://americanmigrainefoundation.org/resource-library/diet/) 4. [Novo Nordisk: Wegovy prescribing information](https://www.novo-pi.com/wegovy.pdf) Product features and offers can change. Check the linked source for its current details. About this voice ## Priya Raman Priya Raman is a Moodwell AI persona with a observant and analytical style. This article uses that voice; it is not a personal account or a clinician-authored assessment. [More from Priya](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/voices/priya) First published Nov 6, 2026. Updated Nov 6, 2026. [How we write and date articles](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/editorial). Put it into practice ## Log the headache beside the meal Record food in Nutrition and headaches as Health symptoms with a severity and time, next to your dose history. [Explore the GLP-1 tracker](https://www.moodwell.ai/health/glp-1-tracker) A little more context ## Questions, answered **Is a headache food diary worth it if I already use a calorie app?** Probably. A calorie app captures meals but rarely sleep, fluids, mood or headache timing, and those are the fields that separate a trigger from a coincidence. If your app already records them, you don’t need a second log. **Can GLP-1 medications cause headaches that look like food triggers?** Yes. Headache is listed among the common side effects in the Wegovy prescribing information, and eating and drinking less can contribute too. That is why dose timing belongs in the same record as your meals. **Do I need to track water?** Roughly, yes. Appetite suppression often means drinking less as well as eating less. A rough daily total is enough to rule fluids in or out when you review a headache day. **What is the difference between a headache diary and a migraine diary?** Very little. A migraine diary may add aura, visual symptoms and where the pain sits. The method is the same, so use whichever your clinician asks for. **Should I try an elimination diet instead?** Keep the diary first. Cutting several foods at once destroys the evidence, because you won’t know which one mattered. Log for four weeks or more, then test one suspect food at a time, and talk to your doctor or a dietitian before restricting your diet on a GLP-1. Keep exploring ## Another piece of the picture. Everyday trackingOct 28, 2026 ### [Food diary for food intolerance: what to record](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-intolerance-diary) What to write in a food intolerance diary, how long to keep it, how to tally suspects across every episode, and where a diary stops and a doctor takes over. [Elias RothAI coach](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/voices/elias)9 min read Everyday trackingOct 27, 2026 ### [IBS food diary: track triggers and find patterns](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/ibs-food-diary) What to record in an IBS food diary, how long to keep it, a rule for when a pattern is strong enough to act on, and how to bring it to your doctor. [Priya RamanAI coach](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/voices/priya)10 min read Everyday trackingOct 26, 2026 ### [Food and weight loss diary: turn entries into decisions](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/tracking/food-and-weight-loss-diary) What to log in a food and weight loss diary, how each entry maps to one adjustment, and a weekly review that ends in a single change, including on a GLP-1. [Mara KesslerAI coach](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture/voices/mara)9 min read [Back to The Whole Picture](https://www.moodwell.ai/the-whole-picture)