How to eat well in any city

The problem with most ways of eating

I grew up in the US, and I was overweight all through elementary school. A lot of it came down to the education around food, and the choices of food. Both were really difficult.

There’s fast food on every corner, one chain after another, and I got addicted to sugar and to the refined, overly processed food that’s everywhere here.

The easiest choices were always the ones that were worse for me. Fast food was the cheapest, and the worst for me. Restaurants were the most expensive, and I didn’t always know what was in the food.

Either way, I still had to make the decision in the moment about what to eat, and if there was something on the menu that was bad for me, I’d consistently choose it.

Once I was living on my own and moving between cities, I ate out constantly, and it added up. When I ate out I wanted to try different things on the menu, and I had no real idea how many calories were in any of it, because none of it was labeled.

Then came the tidal wave of delivery apps, DoorDash and Uber Eats and GrubHub, which made it even easier to order a burger or a pizza and pay crazy fees on top. I got caught up in all of that too.

Finding a better way

At some point I just knew there had to be a better way. I started ordering from a local meal-prep provider, and something about it worked. I knew the person making my food, so I had a decent sense of what was actually in it.

They delivered once a week, it was always in my fridge, and I’d already paid for it, so I felt like I was on the hook to eat it. That was a big part of it.

The accountability of having already bought the food, and not having to make the decision in the moment, because in the moment I’d order the thing that was worse for me and usually more expensive. What I eventually understood was that I’d been leaning too hard on my own willpower, and willpower runs out.

Meal prep took that decision away. There are set menus, they know the macros I’m going for and my preferences, so the choice was already made for me. It was just easier to eat well, and it cost a lot less.

Changes in lifestyle

Over a few years I lost around 40 pounds, quit cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol (I’ve been alcohol-free since 2018), and started competing in Spartan Races, Tough Mudders, and marathons. Remote work gave me the flexibility to prioritize my health, and meal prep was a big piece of that.

Then I started traveling, and eating well got hard again. I’d land somewhere for a month or two, and over a couple of years I lived in more than 15 countries across five continents. The hardest part was always getting my food routine back.

I’d try to line up a meal-prep plan before I even arrived, but the information was scattered everywhere. Some places had an Instagram page, some only took orders over WhatsApp, some had a full website, all with different ways to order. There was no single place where I could compare my options, see roughly what things cost, and find how to reach them.

I sat with the idea for a while. I actually pitched it back in 2022, on a nomad cruise, to a room full of digital nomads.

Eventually I stopped being a nomad and became an immigrant. I moved to Mexico, then to Colombia.

When I’m building a home somewhere, one of the most important things is a real routine around food. Ordering from local providers, food that’s organic, where I know where it came from, instead of some big national chain.

That’s what we’re trying to do with Find Meal Plans. We make sure the services we list are actually local providers, each one reviewed against our vetting standard, not the big national chains that ship across a whole country. Smaller, closer to you, less distance between the kitchen and your door.

Somewhere along the way I realized the hardest part of eating better, for me, was that I was leaning too much on my own willpower to make the right call every time.

• •My willpower looking at a menu.
• •My willpower picking the right things at the grocery store.
• •My willpower not to just order the easy thing.

And willpower drains. Every meal I had to choose pulled from the same limited reserve, and the more decisions there were, the worse my choices got. That decision fatigue is real.

Eating out is fun, and I get to try new things. The catch is I rarely know what’s actually in the food, and a lot of places load a dish with butter and whatever else makes it taste good so I keep coming back. Amazing once in a while, but as an everyday habit it gets expensive and it isn’t good for my health.

Ordering delivery is more of the same, only worse, because of the fees. A meal that should cost half as much, once I add the DoorDash or Uber Eats or GrubHub markup, I’m paying a real premium on it. And the same decision is still sitting right in front of me.

Cooking is the cheapest, but it asks the most. It needs a real kitchen, the time and money to shop, the skill to actually cook, and the cleanup every single time. So much effort, and it leans right back on willpower.

Meal prep takes all of that away. Someone else is cooking from a set menu I pick based on my diet, I prepay for the accountability, it’s delivered, and there’s no cleanup. I get the best parts of every other option without spending the willpower, and for me, it’s just the best way to eat.

Prices vary a lot by city. A meal in Chiang Mai isn’t priced like one in Barcelona, so there’s no single number we can give you.

When a service publishes a price, its listing shows the per-meal cost in the local currency with a USD equivalent. Plenty don’t publish one and just quote you when you message them. Those listings say “price on request,” because we won’t guess a number for them.