Alex's success story with feastr

Hello Alex. Please introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Alex, co-founder of feastr, and I'm responsible for recipe creation and photography. Ultimately, the topic of healthy eating has always interested me. Funnily enough, thanks to feastr and a bet, I've now switched to vegan nutrition. By the way, I also lost a few pounds, as you can see in the photo.

What was the trigger for you to lose weight?

I've had fluctuations in weight for most of my life. I've never been extremely overweight, but have had a few extra pounds at certain points in my life. It started when I was 12 years old. Sweets and a few glasses of coke in the evenings made me look quite chubby in a short time. That changed in the following years, because I paid a little more attention to my diet and was also growing, but after a few years it started all over again. After graduating, I decided with a few friends to get to the bottom of the problem. We wanted to develop an app that would help us and many other people to achieve their goal and keep it that way in the long term.

Then why did you switch to a vegan diet?

As I mentioned before, we wanted to create an app that would help a lot of people, including vegans of course. Since none of us in the team had any idea about the matter, we had to deal with the topic. On New Year's Day 2016, one my co-founders and I made a New Year's resolution to live vegan for 3 months. Our main objective was to understand how certain prejudices against vegan nutrition arise and what is behind them. Personally, I stuck with it and have been vegan for almost 7 years now. I feel fit and healthy. I am also happy that so many vegans use our app. We often get great feedback for offering vegan meal plans, as there are very few good options.

How much weight did you lose, and how did you manage it?

I lost around 23 pounds in 1 year. I love eating, and I love eating big portions. That's why it was important to us to design plans that will never leave you hungry. I've been losing weight consistently with feastr instead of going on a crash diet, and it has paid off. I've maintained my weight so far and with 1200+ recipes in our recipe base I don't have to eat the same recipe every day. I am now also a bestselling cookbook author, which I think speaks for the quality of our recipes and makes me proud. It is very important to me that as a vegan you don't have to abstain from any foods with the feastr app and that you can reach your personal goal easily and deliciously.

What tips do you have for other feastr users?

Try new things and don't be prejudiced. I myself have to admit that I always thought that a vegan diet was one-sided, unhealthy and boring. But when I opened up about the topic, I realized that it wasn't like that at all. There are so many great foods and combinations that are delicious and don't contain any animal products. The good thing about feastr is that you can change your meal plan. If you eat meat, you can still have a vegan week to try it out and then either stick with it or switch back.

Do you have any other goals you want to achieve?

My goal is to make people aware that a healthy and balanced diet is anything but boring and bland. That you don't have to feel hungry if you want to lose a few pounds. That you don't have to stand in the kitchen 5 hours a day to achieve your goal. We want to prove all that with feastr and I think we're doing a pretty good job so far.

If you want to get your own impression of the app, download the app here.