What if getting healthy didn’t require tracking every macro, memorizing every ingredient label, or eliminating half your pantry?

What if it was actually simpler than that? That’s the question at the heart of this podcast episode with Kelsey Wickenhauser — physician assistant, weight loss coach, mama of four, and host of the Kingdom Fit Moms podcast. Kelsey has spent over a decade in medicine, and what she’s learned is that the best path to health isn’t found in the next trending diet. It’s found in something God already gave us.

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Eat Real Food. That’s It.

Kelsey’s food philosophy is disarmingly simple: eat what God made.

If you can pick it, grow it, or raise it… it’s real food. An apple from a tree. A sweet potato from the ground. Chicken you raised. These are the foods your body was designed to run on, and when you build your eating around them, Kelsey says, everything else starts to fall into place.

She uses a helpful mental picture: an apple is real food. Applesauce, mostly real. An apple fritter, getting further removed. Laffy Taffy that’s apple flavored? That’s not food! That’s a science project.

“God created food,” she said. “And I think that’s what He wants us to eat.”

It sounds obvious. But in a world flooded with marketing, misleading labels, and food that’s been engineered to keep us craving more, getting back to real food is actually countercultural. Kelsey encourages her clients to start by understanding the history of the food industry. How money, marketing, and manipulation have shaped what we think is healthy. She recommends the books In Defense of Food and The Daniel Plan as two great starting points. When you develop, as she puts it, a righteous anger for what the enemy has stolen from us in the area of food, something shifts. The blinders come off. And choosing the chicken and sweet potatoes starts to feel like wisdom, not sacrifice.

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Two Kinds of Struggle

In working with women on fertility journeys, I see two very different relationships with food, and Kelsey spoke into both of them beautifully.

The first is a lack of awareness: eating processed, convenient, heavily marketed food without realizing the impact it’s having on hormones, gut health, and fertility. If this is you, Kelsey’s encouragement is gentle: it’s not your fault. You’ve been lied to. Start building wisdom, be patient with yourself, and take one step at a time toward real food.

The second is the opposite extreme: the woman who has consumed every podcast and book and clean-eating guide until she’s scared to eat anything at all. She’s eliminating, restricting, and stressing her body out in the name of health. And paradoxically, this can be just as damaging to fertility as the first.

Kelsey knows this one personally. After three healthy babies, she and her husband wanted one more. Within a year, she had two miscarriages. Looking back, she believes her body was depleted. Her body was over-exercised, undernourished, and running on fumes in an over-committed season of life.

“I didn’t let my body calm down,” she said. “I thought I had to perform and go, go, go.”

Her progesterone likely tanked. Her body didn’t feel safe. And healing came not from doing more, but from doing less. From slowing down, simplifying, resting, and releasing control to the Lord.

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Nourishment Over Restriction

If you’re trying to conceive, Kelsey offers one powerful reframe: instead of asking what should I cut out, ask how can I get more of the good in?

Your body needs to feel like a safe, well-nourished place to carry new life. That means eating enough. It means eating real food. It means not stressing your body with extreme exercise or extreme restriction. And it means giving yourself grace as you figure out what works for you.

On the topic of gluten and dairy… two things that can feel like a minefield in the fertility world. Kelsey’s approach is refreshingly un-dogmatic. Some people genuinely need to eliminate them, particularly those with thyroid disease or clear sensitivities. But for most people, it depends! Her rule of thumb: start with 80-90% real food, pay attention to how your body feels, and don’t let the pursuit of perfection become another source of anxiety.

“I would rather you eat a bell pepper than an Oreo,” she said. “Let’s just keep making steps in the right direction.”

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When Obsession Creeps In

There’s a particular kind of spiral that can happen when we’re trying to conceive and we start learning about food. If you know this spiral, you are not alone.

Kelsey’s answer? Surrender.

Do what you can. Swap out the toxic skincare. Add more protein. Eat the bell pepper. And then release it. Because a body held hostage by anxiety is not a body at rest. And rest is part of healing.

She pointed to Nehemiah as a model: pray, take wise action, gather support, delegate, pray again, move forward. We don’t have to have it all figured out to take the next faithful step. We just have to keep showing up! “Worship is a weapon,” she said. When anxiety rises about what you’re eating or whether this month will be the month, get in the Word. Choose gratitude. Walk in alignment with His thoughts, not the spiral of your own.

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Fit Moms Academy

Kelsey runs a group coaching program called Fit Moms Academy for women who are tired of the diet cycle and ready to lose weight — and find health — for the last time. What makes it different is the depth: she doesn’t just address what you’re eating, she goes after why you keep getting stuck. Root beliefs, childhood patterns, trauma, foundational lies. All of it can show up in how we relate to food, and Kelsey helps women get free.

It’s a community of kingdom-minded women who will encourage you, challenge you, and remind you that living in a healthy vessel is part of your birthright in Christ.

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A Closing Thought

As Kelsey and I wrapped up, I said something I really believe: it takes a village to raise a child — and sometimes it takes a village to get pregnant too.

If your relationship with food is something you’ve been wrestling with on your fertility journey, Kelsey is someone I trust to walk with you through it. Her blend of medical training, lived experience, and genuine faith makes her the real deal.

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