How to use a self-care planner to keep track of your endometriosis symptoms

Creating a self-care planner is essential for anyone with chronic illness. As a chronic illness patient, it can be difficult to remember everything you’ve tried and how your symptoms have responded over time. A self-care planner can be a useful way to track your progress and communicate with your doctor about the things that work for you.

I’ve been using a self-care planner for almost 10 years now. It helps me keep track of my health symptoms and how I’m doing in general. This allows me to communicate more effectively with my doctor when we meet to discuss the best treatment plan for my chronic illness, which is endometriosis. A self-care planner can also help you pinpoint what works well for you and what doesn’t so that you can take charge of your health and wellness on all levels.

A self-care planner will help you track your symptoms in order to find out what’s working and what isn’t.

A self-care planner is a tool you can use to track your symptoms and determine what’s helping, what isn’t, and how you feel overall.

The purpose of a self-care planner is to help you figure out which treatments work for your endometriosis, so that over time, you can find the ones that are most effective for you.

Tracking your symptoms allows you to see patterns in your body. You might notice that certain things help with pain or other symptoms—like taking an aspirin or going for a walk—and other things make them worse—like sleeping with soft blankets or eating chocolate cake (which I swear helps me!). It will also let you know when something has worked really well because it makes all of the symptoms go away (or at least calms them down).

By tracking these things over time, it will be easier for you as an individual to find solutions that work best for YOUR body!

How to use a self-care planner to keep track of your endometriosis symptoms

You can use a self-care planner to track any symptom that you notice, including cramps and pain. Keep in mind that it’s important to track your symptoms as they happen, rather than after the fact—this will help you determine how much pain medication is necessary for future flare-ups.

What should I be tracking?

When keeping a record of your endometriosis symptoms, it’s important to include all relevant information about each episode: when it occurred (date and time), what kind of pain or discomfort you experienced (e.g., cramps), whether there were any other symptoms present (e.g., bloating), when the episode ended (date and time), how long it lasted (number of hours) and how severe it was on a scale from 1–10 with 10 being extremely painful/discomforting.

What types of questions will I ask myself while using my self-care planner?

The main question you’ll want answered is whether or not this particular flare-up was caused by one specific thing (dietary indiscretion, stress at work) or if there are multiple factors involved.

Pain tracker for endometriosis

The pain tracker for endometriosis will help you record your pain levels and symptoms, so that you can more easily identify triggers and patterns. This will help you recognize when the endometriosis is flaring, which helps guide treatment decisions.

When using the pain tracker, remember to pay attention to other factors that can affect your level of pain. For instance:

• Your menstrual cycle (for women) or hormone levels (for men) (check out our menstrual cycle planner here)
• Medication use (prescription or over-the-counter)
• Exercise routine/intensity

Food planner for endometriosis

Keeping a food diary is an important part of keeping track of your endometriosis symptoms. Many women with endometriosis find that certain foods trigger their symptoms, such as bloating, cramps and fatigue. Using a food diary to track your symptoms over time will help you identify these triggers and determine which ones are most likely contributing to your pain. The next step is finding out what foods can help alleviate those same symptoms!

Using a food journal for recording your diet can be useful in helping you figure out what foods (and portions) may be exacerbating or easing the pain from endometriosis. Simply recording everything that goes into your mouth will give you insight into how many carbohydrates, fats and proteins are going into each day’s meal plan—and whether or not it’s making a difference in how well the body functions throughout the day.

Download our free self-care planner of endometriosis

A self-care planner is a tool that can be used to track your symptoms and how they’re affected by different treatments. It can also help you find out what’s working for you and what isn’t, so that you can communicate with your doctor about it. If you want to use our self-care planner, here’s how: