I never felt unhealthy, but I also couldn't say I felt energised. I was just... fine. Getting through the days.
And I couldn't understand why eating well felt so hard. I wanted simple food made from real ingredients — literally the food we're born to eat. But everything seemed designed to steer me elsewhere. The supermarket layout, the food ads, the branding that made ultra-processed products feel like the obvious choice. Low fat. High protein. No added sugar. But always with ingredients I couldn't name.
"Healthy" has been hijacked. I was being un-healthed, for profit.
I'm a software engineer. I spend my days trying to make complicated things simpler. And eating well felt exactly like that, something that should be simple but somehow wasn't. So I started paying attention to how other people navigated this.
A friend visiting from abroad offered to make us lunch. We were already out in town, so we grabbed ingredients as we went. But watching her shop was different. Each ingredient she collected seemed to inspire the next choice. Avocado, then cherry tomatoes because they'd go well, then some rocket, a lemon, maybe some feta. It seemed effortless.
I realised I didn't know how to build my own meals, but she did. She wasn't following a recipe, she was working from a template in her head. "Salad equals greens, add protein and carbs, something creamy, something crunchy, dress it." The formula to make a healthy salad, that actually tastes good.
Not a recipe, a template. That was the insight.
That was the insight. A structure you fill with whatever ingredients you have, whatever looks good, whatever you actually feel like eating.
I started building meals that way, using ingredients as building blocks, swappable at will, held together by a simple template. A stir fry. A grain bowl. A salad. The template kept the meal balanced. The ingredients made it mine.
Once I stopped following other people's recipes and started composing my own meals from real ingredients, something else happened. I started planning ahead. Not weeks in advance, just a few days. Enough to know what I was eating before I was tired and hungry and staring at an empty fridge.
Then I realised what meal planning actually does.
A plan is not immunity from food industry tactics. But it's an anchor, and you can feel them pulling at it. The convenience meal. The easy order. The product that claims to be healthy but isn't. But when you've already decided what you're eating, those pulls get weaker.
Making an extra portion for the next day felt like repairing the last chink in my armour. UPF companies exploit decision-making moments, to sell convenience. Having a healthy ready-meal in the fridge means there's no decision to make. This is their vulnerability.
More quickly than I expected I became someone who ate healthy food most of the time. Not someone trying to eat healthy food, someone who did. Meals taste better, I feel better. Food has become enjoyable, interesting even, rather than a necessary chore.
So I built Halefu, a simple meal planner for real food.
It helps you plan your week with ingredients you actually recognise. Know exactly what you're putting in your body. No brands. No products. No barcode scanning, or dietary micro-managment. Just simple planning that normalises better food in your everyday life.
Eat meals, not products.
— Doug, founder of Halefu
Free to start. No credit card required.