“I was amazed at what I was learning about the power of a WFPB diet to reverse many diseases I had seen as an ICU nurse”

By: Jessica Clark

My mom took me to an OBGYN when I was 15 years old because I had not started mensurating. I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), and the doctor recommended I take birth control and metformin. My mom didn’t feel good about having me take metformin, but I did take birth control for 6 months.

Since PCOS can be associated with the development of type II diabetes, and my grandma had this disease, my mom and I also went to a doctor who specialized in diabetes management. He suggested I follow a low-carbohydrate diet.

While this doctor had good intentions, I found the advice difficult to follow. I learned to count carbohydrates but found it challenging to stick to the 30 g and 15 g recommendations for meals and snacks, respectively. I have always had a hearty appetite, and I wondered how I would ever be satisfied with this dietary recommendation. I discovered that meat, cheese, eggs, and peanut butter were all high-protein, low-carbohydrate foods, and I primarily relied on these foods to get full. I largely avoided fruit, as I believed it had too many carbohydrates.

The advice wasn’t all bad: I stopped eating most foods with refined sugar and increased my vegetable consumption. I ate lots of salads (all with animal protein), and most people said I had a healthy diet.

The diabetes doctor also recommended I engage in 30 minutes of intense exercise daily. I did some sports in high school but did not enjoy regular exercise out of season. Looking back, I realize I did not generally feel great or consistently have energy for regular, high-intensity exercise.

I went to a naturopath for several years, who reinforced the diabetes doctor’s recommendations to avoid sugar consumption. She also said my thyroid health was not optimal, although it was not bad enough to show problems on conventional blood tests (my thyroid labs were low and barely within the normal range). I believe this may have contributed to my general feelings of sluggishness. Between the naturopath and my efforts to consume a healthy diet, I did okay for many years.

While in college, I studied nursing. I remember one lecture discussing atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in the arteries). The teacher said this buildup could not occur if one didn’t eat fat.

His statement made me reexamine and reevaluate my diet. As mentioned, all the foods I relied on to get full and stay satisfied were high in protein, and I realized they were also high in fat. I thought it was weird that the diet I had been recommended for diabetes prevention (low carbohydrate) could be bad for heart health. Nevertheless, I stopped buying the blocks of Costco cheese and tried to eat more chicken instead of beef or pork. I also ate some legumes (beans and rice or split pea soup) because they were cheap, which I appreciated as a college student.

After I graduated, I worked as a nurse at the University of Utah Hospital in the Medical ICU (MICU), which had the highest mortality rate of any unit in the hospital. Most of the patients there had had chronic disease(s) for years, and I saw people die from complications related to diabetes, heart disease, renal disease, liver failure, etc.

During this time, I continued to try and live healthfully, but I found myself gaining weight (switching back and forth between day and night shifts probably didn’t help). I think I weighed at most 150 pounds, but I didn’t like my weight gain. (I could tell it affected my dating life!)

After working for less than two years in the MICU, I went on a mission to Buenos Aires (West), Argentina. While on my mission, I walked almost every day, all day. Lunch is the big meal of the day in Argentina, and it was also when we ate with the members. We were usually out working during dinner time, and I avoided eating when we came home at night because I didn’t want to gain weight. I was unfamiliar with the term “intermittent fasting” then, but that was what I was doing. These habits contributed to weight loss, and for the first time, I felt like I was at the weight I wanted to be, although I didn’t like the constant hunger or insomnia (due to hunger and the stress from my dual assignment as a Mission Nurse Specialist and proselyting missionary).

I didn’t have access to a scale on my mission, but I would guess I was around my current weight of 125 pounds. When I came home from my mission, I gained some weight back, but I checked the scale regularly, and by doing this, I kept my weight around 132 pounds.

Early in the summer of 2019, about a year after I had come home from my mission, my sister announced to my family that she and her family would not be eating meat that summer (you can read her story here).

At the time, I thought she was crazy. I wondered how her family was going to get enough protein. When we had our family vacation in August, my parents decided we would all follow a vegan diet for the week. By this point, my sister had done more research and had learned about many of the plant-based doctors, and it was during our trip that I first learned about a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet.

Over the following months, I started reading books: Eat to Live, How Not to Die, The Starch Solution, The China Study, Breasts: The Owner’s Manual, Mastering Diabetes, etc. From my undergraduate education at BYU, I learned about research and how to discern good quality research and its findings. I was amazed at what I was learning about the power of a WFPB diet to reverse many diseases I had seen as an ICU nurse. In my study of these books and further examination of the Word of Wisdom, I came to have a greater understanding of and could see the wisdom in the Lord’s guide for eating.

A few months into my transition to a WFPB diet, I injured my leg and was not able to exercise for a time. I expected to gain weight, but I was pleasantly surprised that I lost weight due to the WFPB diet. My leg mostly recovered, but I reinjured it about a year later (October 2020) and have been struggling with it ever since. Even though I have had this handicap and have not been able to rely on exercise to keep my weight in check, weight loss and maintenance have been easy, thanks to a WFPB diet (I easily maintain 125 pounds).

Learning that (saturated) fat was the underlying culprit of insulin resistance has been revolutionary for me. I also loved learning about calorie density, which allows me to eat a high volume of food and leaves me satiated for several hours after a meal. Legumes have been key to my success— I don’t think I was ever full and satisfied until I started eating them daily. Legumes and nonstarchy vegetables are the foundation of my meals. I also eat several servings of fruit every day. The amount of starch and fat I eat fluctuates depending on my level of insulin resistance (I have a few key indicators that help me know how I’m doing). I usually prefer starches such as sweet potatoes, winter squash, quinoa, teff, etc. and nuts/seeds as opposed to oil. This way of eating, plus intermittent fasting, has helped me drop my hemoglobin A1C from 5.6 to 4.9.

My thyroid lab levels are now situated in the middle of the normal range. Early in my transition to a WFPB diet, I noticed that my thyroid would feel funny after I ate dairy, and I would have brain fog. “Nice cream” (frozen, blended bananas) has become an easy way for me to get my ice cream fix. I generally feel better now than I did before adopting a WFPB diet.

The last few years have been a wild ride for my health. I am grateful that the Lord introduced my family to a WFPB diet and gave us a greater understanding of the Word of Wisdom when He did. A WFPB diet has been an anchor for me with my physical injury and mental health challenges in recent years. While this diet has not been able to solve some of my physical or mental health difficulties, it has helped me avoid developing additional problems (becoming overweight and pre-diabetic/diabetic) while working through my other challenges. I can’t yet say I’m grateful for my health difficulties, but I know these struggles have made me kinder, more compassionate, and more empathetic to others with chronic health problems. I suspect my experiences will make me a better Nurse Practitioner.

Jessica Clark (32) is a nurse and recently graduated from BYU’s Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) Program (August, 2024). She enjoys cooking, learning about health, and playing games with family and friends. Her favorite games include Skull King, Cover Your Assets, Bananagrams, and Code Names.