If you regularly test your blood glucose levels , a blood glucose monitoring diary will help you to spot patterns and make sense of the numbers you are getting.
Different people have different regimes and needs so we’ve made three different monitoring diaries to choose from.
Download a free blood glucose diary in PDF or Excel format for you to keep a record of your blood glucose levels. Feel free to distribute these as you wish.
Monthly blood glucose monitoring diary
Monthly monitoring diary – good for spotting trends in your numbers and also for those who test their blood glucose on a more occasional basis.
Weekly blood glucose monitoring diaries
A weekly monitoring diary with space to record meals, notes as well as dosage information.
A weekly monitoring diary with space to record meals and notes. This diary is for people whose medication is not subject to change on a daily basis.
Blood glucose recording tips
Although the following may be common sense, we’ve listed several blood glucose recording tips to make recording your blood glucose levels easier.
- Use the top ‘notes’ section to record the medication you are taking. If you record dosage info, use shorthand eg ‘5 H’ could stand for 5 units of Humalog and ‘10 L’ for 10 units of Levemir.
- If a day need a lot of notes, put an asterisk * or a number, eg [2], in the notes for that day and write up more full notes on the back of the diary sheet.
- Make a note of exercise and illnesses as these can both have an effect on sugar levels. It can be helpful to record any periods of stress during the day for this reason too.
- Note down any periods where a meal has had to be delayed or missed out. If you do shift work or have less regular sleeping times, you may want to change some of the headings or make extra notes. Test your blood sugar at varying times of the day.
In addition, if you find it difficult to test at a certain part of the day, say before breakfast or after lunch, do what you can to fit these tests in to build a better all round understanding of your blood sugar control.
It may also be an idea to hole punch your notes and put them into an easy to access folder for future reference.
Spotting trends in your blood sugar levels
Test before and after meals (either 1 or 2 hours after).
This will help you to see how well you and your medication cope with different meals.
- Make a note of the meals which make your blood sugar control more difficult.
- Look to see if your numbers are high during certain parts of the day.
- Look at how exercise, illness and stress affect your blood glucose levels. Try to see how much these events affect your sugar levels and/or medication dosages.
- If you keep notes going back over a number of years, you may be able to spot seasonal trends. For example, you may notice that for three years running your numbers have started to increase during October.
