Tracking my Mood & Food Intake

[Human_iT_E]

I am curious about the connect between my food intake and my overall mood. As an individual with a psychiatric disorder (PTSD) I have been tracking my mood for 2+ years using Gyroscope Mood Score and ~1 year of Moodpath.
I have also been collecting what I eat in a food journal called Bitesnap.

I am curious to see if there is a connection between sugar and caffeine intake and my mood, but also to explore other aspects of my nutrition to motivate myself to be more mindful of what I eat.

Gyroscope Data
Tracking mood in the gyroscope app uses a technique called profile of mood states to calculate various dimensions like happiness, anger, stress adnd energy and combine them into a total mood score. I track my mood using the ‘Curious’ method which gives you 30seconds to swipe yes or no for 39 flash cards of emotions. The data exports into total score (out of 100) as well as happiness, social, energy and wellness scores.

Moodpath Data
Moodpath prompts me to check-in 3 times a day to answer a few ‘yes’/‘no’ questions and then log my mood via tags and an opportunity to write about the situation. The data exports my happiness score, tagged emotions, and the intensity of questions answered.

Bitesnap Data
Bitesnap uses the latest deep learning models to detect and recognize foods so as to automated food input and meal tracking. The data exports the food name, item, item details, serving, calories and a slew of other nutrition data.

[madprime]

I think mood data is really interesting! I haven’t tried either Gyroscope or Moodpath. I guess they were both branded in ways that didn’t seem relevant (health optimization & mental health issues), but I want to check them out. I tried Daylio briefly but found the export timestamped my scheduled check-ins according to the time I scheduled (not the time I did it – I’m terrible at adherence to my own scheduled checkins…)

I’ve been using iMoodJournal for almost a year now, and it’s simple (1-10 score) and I got into the habit of using it (important!). But it seems too simplistic… I’m curious if/how T doses affect my mood, and with that single score I wonder if it’s not capturing specific dimensions that might be changing – e.g. aggression, fatigue. So thank you – I’m going to try these two apps!

Regarding your diet questions: have you thought about actively testing changes (ABA, ABAB, etc.), rather than relying on correlations? (Random correlations can have weaker signals, and it might also be harder to determine causality.)