"I ate a sweet potato for breakfast and now I’m a fitness celebrity."

My whole life, I was just like you — eating crap on the go, working and messing around on social media until 2am, sleeping for five hours and then drinking four cups of coffee the next day. I basically only drank water when my pee looked like yellow Gatorade. My hair was starting to fall out from stress and lack of nutrients and I’m pretty sure I was developing rickets.

I knew my lifestyle was unhealthy, but I figured that I had just started my eventual physical decline. There was no way out of this tailspin. I gave in to the inevitable.

Then one day, I ate a sweet potato for breakfast.

And overnight, I became a paragon of fitness and health inspiration for those around me.

“A sweet potato, wow!” said my boss at work admiringly, although I hadn’t told him what I had for breakfast. “Are you going paleo? That’s such a healthy way to live!” People at the office looked at me enviously, asking if I had lost weight and telling me my skin looked amazing. The VP implied if I kept it up, I would be promoted for the first time in five years. My assistant didn’t drink a single Diet Coke that day out of respect.

I worked efficiently for eight hours and felt total mental clarity without caffeine for the first time since I was eight years old. My work was precise and excellent. I know this because my many co-workers told me so repeatedly in an envious tone.

By 4pm I had met my Fitbit step goal for the first time since putting it on three years ago. Honestly, I had forgotten I was wearing it until I felt a strange buzzing on my wrist. I don’t know how it stayed charged. I actually walked 30,000 steps that day, mainly trying to get more sweet potatoes.

If I could feel this good after eating one for breakfast one day, I HAD to make this a habit.
The next day I ate a sweet potato for breakfast again. And when I logged into Instagram, I had 30k followers. So I posted a picture of my sweet potato. 25k likes. 10k comments.

People asking me how they could become more like me and follow my lifestyle. Eat sweet potatoes for breakfast, I typed back. They started the hashtag #sweetpotatoforbreakfast to show me that they were taking my advice seriously. Soon there were 55,000 photos on the hashtag.

Wow, I thought, I’m onto something with these sweet potatoes.

While we’re on the topic, we’re obsessed with this Instagram account that shows fierce, fab, man-repelling outfits. Post continues after audio.

So I ate one for breakfast on the third day, as well. Next thing I knew, I was approached by a Nike VP who asked me to change into a pair of Luxe leggings real quick on the side of the street. He took one picture of me casually squatting and $150,000 went into my bank account. I never even gave him the routing number.

The fourth day I ate my sweet potato as I got dressed and realized my clothes no longer fit — I had gained 10 pounds of muscle and lost 25 pounds of fat overnight. I threw on a pair of shorts and a sports bra and booked a fitness modeling job for the cover of Shape magazine on my way to getting a promotional deal with GNC.

These sweet potatoes are working! I thought to myself as Rihanna played in the background at the Shape photo shoot. I’m a thought leader in the health and wellness industry!

The fifth day, I won a fitness competition by 1,234 points and set a new world record. The sixth day, I launched an exercise and wellness app that broke iTunes and made me a billionaire.

Maybe I could form an entire life philosophy around eating sweet potatoes for breakfast, I mused, idly watching my Instagram numbers grow larger than Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift’s combined.

Maybe there’s a whole life in this.

And on the seventh day I went to brunch and lost all my gains.

This post originally appeared on The Belladonna Comedy and has been republished here with full permission. Follow The Belladonna Comedy on Facebook here.