A food diary without counting calories
A food diary doesn't need calories in it. What you ate, when and roughly how much is a full record on its own, and it's a lot quicker to keep when nothing has to be weighed or looked up. This page is about that version: what to write instead of a number, how to keep rough amounts consistent, and what you give up. The rest of the habit is in the how-to, and the columns are in the template.
It's the version I keep. What I care about in my own log is habits and quantities; I don't particularly care about calories. In the first app I built for it, a quantity was just a 2x I wrote by hand next to the food.
Why calories slow a food diary down
A calorie count needs 2 things for every food: a weight, and a database entry to multiply it by. For a packet with a label on it, that's quick enough. For a stew you made, a restaurant meal or a plate someone else cooked, it means guessing the grams and then looking up each ingredient, and the meals that take longest to log are usually the first to go missing. A diary without the number skips both steps, and an entry is down to a few words.
What to write instead of a number
The food by name, the time, and an amount in words. That's really the whole entry, and if you want one more thing, a mark of your own for whatever you care about (the how-to has more on those).
The amount is the part worth a bit of thought, since it's the one that replaces the number.
Rough amounts that stay consistent
Rough is fine; what matters is that the same amount gets the same words. Pick a few units from your own kitchen and stick with them: a bowl, a plate, a slice, a handful, a glass. "A big bowl" should mean the same bowl in March as in January, otherwise a few months of entries can't be compared with each other.
Count what comes in pieces (2 eggs, 3 slices) and use fractions for what's shared (half the pizza, a third of the cake). For everything else, small, normal and big are plenty.
When you're not sure, write what you'd say to someone across the table. "A normal plate of pasta" is a perfectly good entry, and so is "pasta" on its own, if the amount isn't what you care about for that food.
A photo instead of words?
A photo per meal is quicker still, and some calorie-free diaries are just that. It's also the hardest kind to go back through: finding one food in a camera roll mostly means scrolling, and an amount in a photo is only as clear as the angle. Words take a few seconds longer and are a lot easier to search.
What you give up
Totals, mainly. A diary without numbers can't give you a day or a week as a figure, or what's in the food beyond its name. If you need those, for whatever reason, a calorie counter with a food database is the right tool, and this page isn't trying to talk you out of one. You can also run both, the counter on the days you want the numbers and the diary for everything else.
More guides in Keeping a food and stool diary.
Full disclosure: I make Digest, an iOS food journal with no calories in it anywhere. There's no food database and nothing to weigh: you type a meal the way you'd say it, and Digest reads it into foods and a time. An amount, when you want one, is a plain count on the food, 2 or ½, never grams. Foods get up to 8 colors, each with a name and a meaning only you see, and a search for a color lists the days it shows up. Digest never marks a food good or bad. There's no account. It's a journal, not a medical device, and nothing in it is medical advice.