Lifestyle & Fitness

14. Jun 2018

Philipp from Exceedingly vegan talks about going vegan at Discovery in London

It was a great pleasure to be invited to the Discovery headquarters in London last month to talk about my journey going vegan. Watch the best bits of my talk on how I started my vegan journey, my ups and downs and tips on how to go exceedingly vegan yourself.

And thank you to Discovery who let me use their video.

Six years ago I was in a phase of my life where I just wasn’t happy. I felt I was poisoning myself emotionally by being in an unhealthy relationship and physically by smoking 20 cigarettes a day, not to mention I ate a lot of animal products. I decided I had to change something and take control of my life again.

I didn’t know where to start but after getting a terrible cough my friend suggested to give up smoking. I more or less went cold turkey over night and haven’t had a cigarette since. The reason why I haven’t had a cigarette since was that I realized quitting up smoking wasn’t about giving up something, but about regaining control of my life and my health. I didn’t want to be dependent on something that’s not good for me anymore.

This realization and a determination to treat myself better led me to a detox.

I researched the most healthy foods on the planet to plan my dinners and went on a more or less accidental vegan diet. And the more I then researched about healthy foods the more I found out about plant-based nutrition and it’s many benefits, not just for your health, but also for the animals and the planet. I was hooked! I spent hours on the internet trying to find out more about veganism, health, fitness and environmental and animal welfare questions.

For me, once I see the truth and I feel deep inside of me I am doing the right thing, there is no turning back. Being vegan means being conscious of your choices. I decided I won’t let marketing or other people determine how I live my life and how I take care of myself. Initially there was resistance in my friendship circle but their negativity actually motivated me even more to do my own thing.

When I started going vegan, I noticed there was a lot of confusion about what it meant to be vegan. My friends thought it was boring, complicated and unhealthy. People were almost afraid of vegan food. So I set myself the challenge to exceed people’s expectations about vegan food.

I love cooking and I always came up with amazing recipe creations that were really easy to make. I am not a chef by trade, so my recipes are naturally very easy to make. I thought, if I can cook them, other people can definitely try make dishes as well.

So I set up my blog to also give people the tools for change and share my knowledge with others. My goal was to create recipes even meat eaters would devour and I am very determined to bring everyone back to the table again, vegans and omnivores alike. Initially my blog was aimed at friends and family to inspire them to try something new.

Let me know in the comments how you started to become vegan and what your ups and downs and obstacles were.

You can also watch my talk on my youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/exceedinglyvegan