Why Triggerbites exists

The story behind Triggerbites

Last year I was the healthiest I'd ever been. Mediterranean diet, daily exercise, great sleep and an active social life.

And then, over a surprisingly short period of time, my body started to feel… wrong.

Living with "mystery" flares

At first, the flares were easy to dismiss.

Every few weeks I'd be hit by a strange "off" period that lasted a few days.

Throat mucus and irritation. Headaches. Brain fog. Bowel issues. Waking up wired at 4am for no good reason.

I'd cancel plans, stay home, rest, and wait it out.

Then I'd feel better and tell myself: "It was just a bug. Back to normal."

Except "normal" kept slipping away from me.

Those flares slowly went from rare interruptions to something I half-expected. I tried to keep up my routine but each day it was getting worse and worse. As I realised this issue was here to stay, I started visiting doctors, but time after time all the tests I did pointed to the same thing: I was fine. On paper at least. Yet I felt the worst I'd ever felt in my life. How come?

Food as a suspect

Somewhere in all this, food kept being a common denominator with my symptoms.

I started noticing patterns, or what looked like patterns:

certain meals made my throat and head pressure worse
sometimes a strict diet helped… until it didn't
some flares felt totally random, others felt almost too logical

But I knew enough to know that symptoms can be delayed, layered, and messy.

So I did what most of us do:

Read articles.

Scrolled Reddit.

Asked ChatGPT.

Googled late at night between appointments and test results.

If food was a suspect, I needed more than hunches. I needed something I could look at and say:

"This isn't just a feeling. Here's the evidence."

And honestly, doctors needed that too. It's incredibly hard to help someone when all you have is scattered memories of "bad days".

Every food diary I tried (and why I stopped)

So I followed the standard advice:

"Just keep a food diary for a few weeks and see what you notice."

Here's what actually happened:

I started on paper. Then I moved to logging on Notion. I actually did this for a good month. But when I tried to use those notes, they just stared back at me. I couldn't see anything clearly.
I searched for apps. Most of them assumed I was starting from scratch. No way to bring what I'd already written. And they all wanted me to log their way - 20 taps, tight categories, rigid structure, search for every food, you know the drill. I couldn't bring in my notes so I decided not to use them.

I felt stuck between two options:

apps that made me log like I'm a data entry robot
or piles of unsearchable notes that "felt" useful but were scrappy and with no real insights…

From half-finished journals to something that actually helps

Could there be a third option? I wanted there to be one, because I wanted to use it myself. I wanted the diary to:

take in all your past notes so you don't start from scratch
make food logging as quick and natural as sending a text or snapping a picture
accept messy, incomplete data - or better yet, just feel like a diary
not lose your thoughts and notes in the process
focus on symptoms and the ingredients around those symptoms, not just calories
find the patterns for me
turn everything into a clear report I can share with doctors - no more pure guesswork

But not just for myself. This is built for you if food feels like part of the picture - gut issues, reflux, skin flares, headaches, low energy, or just a general "something's off but I don't know what."

It's for you if:

you've tried tracking before and burned out
you feel like you have to think about what you eat every day just to feel okay
you're stuck between "do nothing and hope" and "track everything but be sceptical about the final result"
you want to walk into appointments with data

You don't have to turn your life into fields and checkboxes. You write your days in your own words - what you ate, how you felt, what was going on - and Triggerbites quietly turns that into something you can actually use.

Over time, your diary stops being a blur of bad days and becomes a clearer picture of what might be driving them. Not so you can track forever, but so you can finally discover what's going on and feel more in control of your own body.

Live, love, log. 🧡 - Aki