forrealfoodie Founder
Kelly West Ridgeway
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Founder & COO
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BBA Health Care Administration, Eastern Kentucky University
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MBA University of Louisville
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Licensed Life and Health Insurance Agent
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Certified Group Fitness Instructor, ACE 2021
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Certified Health Coach, ACE 2021
Kelly's testimony...
Hi. I am Kelly West Ridgeway, founder, and COO of forrealfoodie and I’d like to tell you a little about myself. I am first and foremost a believer and lover of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful that you clicked on this tab to find out more about me, but who I truly am is someone who tries to be everything God wants of me. Thank God for new mercies because I fall short daily. However, I particularly spent almost my entire life outside of God’s will in my health without trying to and even being aware of it.
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I was born in 1970 to parents who even until this day make my sister, brother and I feel extremely loved and cared for. However, it was my grandmother that truly taught me the importance of Christ and how much He loves me. Regular church attendance was modeled in my family but my parents also put an emphasis on working hard and working smart. I have an undergraduate degree in Health Care Administration and an MBA. I’ve owned two companies, my first at 24 years old. I am also now, as a result of my experiences, a Certified Health Coach.
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Family is extremely important to me, both immediate and distant and even my friends with no blood connection are still family, indeed. I have been married for 20 years, I have a teen-aged daughter who I adore and my family and I are raising my 2 year old granddaughter, my step-daughter’s daughter, my joy.
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All my life I have been surrounded and consumed by health challenges and unhealthy lifestyles as it relates to food. I had two grandfathers who were diabetic, one dying from complications of diabetes. My grandmother had a breast removed due to breast cancer. My father had prostate cancer and still suffers complications as a result. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes in 2014. My doctor advised for many years that I had “slightly high cholesterol”.
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Both my father and mother were diagnosed with diabetes after me. I am the only one in my immediate family who doesn’t have hypertension. My father, mother, brother and sister have all struggled with high blood pressure. Obesity is so prevalent in my family that it is “normal.”
I could count on one hand the number of adults in my family, before they become older aged adults, who are not obese. And, before I changed my life, I had been overweight or obese since my youth with few periods of normal weight due to dieting and supplements that never worked and resulted in me gaining weight, often more than what I lost. I remember going on my first diet (starvation then binging) at 11 years old. I lived in a constant state of unhealthy behaviors and unhappiness about my weight from my childhood until God introduced me to the Whole Food Plant Based lifestyle inspired by Genesis 1:29.
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Both my mother and grandmother cooked their socks off. The foods I grew up eating were extremely delicious and literally fed our poor states of health. We didn’t know a family meal without meat. Even, vegetables were seasoned with meat. Processed, manufactured ingredients along with dairy and eggs filled the breads and desserts we ate. But medical procedures, hospital stays, cancer and Alzheimer’s diagnoses and unfortunately premature death, especially from the men in my family, are a heartbreaking normal.
In 2006, I became a licensed Life and Health Insurance Agent. This opened up the door for me to encounter thousands of people sick in their bodies with preventable/reversible diseases. It is so common that people who are not on some form of maintenance medication are the ones who stand out to me because it’s so rare. It is through these experiences that God illuminated to me that most of us are not living the abundant lives that Christ came (and died) for us to live.
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One particular encounter with a client who had been healed of a very serious chronic disease through eating more of a plant based diet is what gratefully changed my life. God put me on a journey and gave me an assignment that I am still humbled by.
That is to “tell my people” how to be in their most abundant health, with often an extension being their most abundant lives, according to the Word of God. John 10:10 tells us that “the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
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Today, I live abundantly, more than I could have ever imagined. I am free of any chronic disease including obesity. God planted the seed in my spirit to write my book, Obesity, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cancer – Thy Will or My Will? Is God Getting Glory From Your Chronic Disease? And by staying close to Him, He has also guided and directed as I created the forrealfoodie™ online educational program, which offers a step by step Biblically based approach to a healthier, more abundant life.
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By learning and becoming a good steward of your temple, I am excited that you will enjoy more of the abundant life that God so desires for you. May God Bless You in abundance as He has blessed me. I am grateful.
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Kelly West Ridgeway
Founder and COO, forrealfoodie
b/c God is the CEO
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