The Sweet Life

For roughly seven years, I ate at least one sweet potato every single day. Sometimes two.

Some days, I’d chop them into little half moons and char them in the oven or roast them whole and top them with cinnamon. Most of the time I’d prick them with a fork, microwave them for eight to ten minutes, and eat them with one tablespoon of ketchup.

If that sounds uninspiring, it’s because it was. I wasn’t eating them because I was inspired by them. I had convinced myself that I needed them like air, thus I considered them as little as I did breathing. I never had to write them on my grocery list because my first stop was the produce section to fill a thin, plastic bag with five, fist-sized sweet potatoes. My nutritionist had told me years ago that one serving size was roughly the size of her fist, which seemed roughly the size of mine, so I stuck to that. She told me that sweet potatoes were a safe food for me, and so I stuck to that, too.

I didn’t notice my addiction until two years ago. I found myself in a miserable cafe management position when I moved to Washington, D.C., so I sought refuge in taking some writing classes at a local university. In one class, my brilliantly unconventional professor tasked us with giving up something important to our daily lives, some habit or obsession, for two whole weeks and writing about it along the way. I rolled my eyes at this proposition. I’d been to therapy. I’d done the work to recover from my eating disorder and all of its obsessions. I’d given up a lot. There was nothing left to give.

But my perfectionism won over my initial resistance, so I thought about the things I did every single day. The only one that was unflinchingly consistent was my daily sweet potato. It felt hilarious that I had to give up my beloved orange spud, and I wondered how dull my writing would be.

On the first morning of the assignment, as I spooned my oatmeal and started to consider what could replace my daily sweet potato that lately accompanied a chicken breast for dinner, a burst of anger hit me. This task no longer felt hilarious. What the hell was I supposed to eat? How stupid of a challenge was this? What, was I going to roast a regular potato for myself, like I often did for my boyfriend? That was a ridiculous waste of a similar amount of calories without the nutritional benefits. I could just eat the chicken breast, but what if I felt hungry afterward? Then I might binge on something. I could roast some cauliflower, that was sort of starchy but offered more nutrients for the amount of calories and—

It clicked. For the first time, I felt it. I was addicted to sweet potatoes—and they were keeping me sick. The anger that I felt in having to consider what else I could possibly eat now felt so obviously rooted in a fear I was familiar with, a fear I thought I'd recovered from. Fear that something about myself would break if I did not follow the rules, or in this case, eat sweet potatoes. Whether it be ballooning into obesity or shrinking back into anorexia, what if sweet potatoes were the only thing holding me together? Who could I be and where would I be without them?

It sounds ridiculous to put it into words, but that’s why the feeling was so powerful—I’d never put it into words. It is ridiculous to be afraid of a diet without sweet potatoes, because there are millions of other foods to eat. But once I was tasked with considering all of them, it didn't feel ridiculous it felt terrifying. As I sat in my anger and fear, I was able to acknowledge how privileged I am to have an endless variety of alternative foods at my fingertips. It is not hard for me to think of a substitute meal because almost anything sounds better and more fulfilling than microwaving a potato when I think about it in my rational mind and not from my disordered eating perspective. What was so infuriating was that I was being called out for the lie that I was telling myself, that my sick mind was long gone. I referred to my eating disorder in the past tense, and I liked to talk about it openly as if I’ve reached the prestigious position of being recovered.

With this assignment and my sudden and unsettling realization, I started to write and reflect on the inception of my addiction. By the time I was twenty years old, my world centered around my eating disorder, commonly personified by my therapists as Ed. When I wasn’t going for miles-long walks with a backpack full of canned beans—for weight—or making what became known to those around me as “hot salads”—bowls full of cooked cabbage, broccoli, and carrots—or working long hours in pastry kitchens soaking up methods of food manipulation, I was researching the newest trends in dieting and weight loss. In one of my late night searches, I came across an article on the magical combination of vitamins, low glycemic impact, and low calories of a sweet potato, so I gave them a try. I ate my first sweet potato—half of it—with just a pinch of cinnamon on top—because I’d read that cinnamon helps speed up your metabolism. The texture was hearty, more satisfying than that of the blistered vegetables in my hot salad. With the cinnamon, I would have told you it was as good as any dessert I’d ever labored over. Roasting half of a sweet potato became a treat to myself, but just that—not a staple, not a hug, not an addiction. Not yet.

It wasn’t until I was 23, after my high school sweetheart broke up with me because he said I didn’t seem happy, that I truly committed myself to sweet potatoes in an unexpected place—an eating disorder treatment program. I agreed to try intensive outpatient treatment after my breakup because I finally agreed with someone’s accusation of me, not that I was sick with an eating disorder, but that I wasn’t happy. The team of therapists tried to explain eating disorders to me, ensuring me that it was a biological and curable illness, describing it like a kind of cancer and not a mental illness. I never really believed them about the diagnosis, so when they’d talk to me about refeeding and how crucial it was to the success of eating disorder patients like me, it felt confusing. I was in charge of facilitating the refeeding by increasing my food intake. I, not a doctor or trained professional, was ultimately in charge of the treatment for the illness I didn’t fully believe I had. I was just there to get happy.

I met with a nutritionist every week, and she helped me construct a meal plan—the way she asked if I had space for raisins or olive oil or applesauce in my diet made me want to throw her clipboard out the window. Based on what I told her about my limited diet going into treatment, she determined that sweet potatoes were a safe food for me, so she wrote meal plans that included a daily sweet potato, sometimes one at lunch and another at dinner.

I came to love these meal plans, not because I structured my eating around them, but because I prided myself on my ability to manipulate and resist them. I leaned into the idea that sweet potatoes were safe and that many of the nutritionist’s additions were not. I would never coat slices of sweet potato in oil, bake them, and eat them like french fries, but I could start dipping my plain roasted sweet potato in ketchup. Instead of making a sweet potato hash with bacon and gooey over-easy eggs, I scrambled a couple of egg whites to accompany a microwaved potato. This was more than I had eaten previously, but not exactly what was being asked of me for treatment, so at the time, this seemed like the perfect balance.

I credited sweet potatoes for keeping me thin but getting me out of this supposed disease, so after my time at the treatment center ended, sweet potatoes became my support system. I came to enjoy when the center of the potato resisted the microwave and added a stiffer texture to my meal with its rawness. When I was too embarrassed to bring one for lunch at the cool French bakery I worked at in New York, I adjusted my schedule to eat a sweet potato with a fistful of arugula and two egg whites at one in the morning, giving me time to get there before three. On more than one occasion, I ripped open the burnt orange jacket to find spots of black mold and simply ate around it as best I could because now I couldn’t imagine eating nothing, but I also couldn’t imagine eating anything but a sweet potato. I felt more comfortable eating out with friends or indulging a bit more on desserts because I was confident that I could detox whatever damage I’d done with my sweet potato diet.

For years I lived like this, leaning on my daily sweet potato to center me. Simultaneously, I began sharing more with friends, family and strangers about how I used to have an eating disorder. I’d post photos of myself on social media from a time when my arms used to look more like angel hair than the linguine they’d grown to. I internally wrestled with the yearning I felt for the before photos, for angel hair arms and protruding collar bones and praise for my smallness. I chalked it up to my life, byproducts of the illness I never really admitted I had but was now recovered from. I didn’t think critically about my public displays of recovery or my sweet potatoes.

Until my professor’s writing prompt, I hadn’t really taken the time to consider where the sweet potato seed had been planted in my journey because I had gotten to a place where they seemed as part of my day as brushing my teeth. When I finally succumbed to the assignment and sat down to write about my fears surrounding a life without sweet potatoes, I read aloud how my dependency was keeping me sick. There were days during that two week abstinence that I wrestled with severe body dysmorphia to the point that I almost threw a pair of pants away because I was convinced they didn’t fit me, even as they dangled comfortably from my torso. I wrote about the suffocating responsibility of choosing what to eat instead of following a set of strict rules and plans. The very sickness that I try to distance myself from—the one that doctor’s tried to fix by helping me embrace safe foods and challenge myself with fear foods, the one that I claimed to be recovered from—created a new sickness. I was not just dependent on sweet potatoes but dependent on my obedience, never questioning eating them.

In my treatment, I’d been encouraged to have a safe food, so of course I felt, quite literally, unsafe without it. It’s hard not to question this tactic in hindsight. I recognize that there’s a space in treatment for embracing comfort foods when so many foods feel scary, and I don’t envy the medical professionals trying to make sense of such an irrational disease, but I do wonder how many others “graduated” from that treatment facility with an eating disorder of another name. Because is it not slightly disordered to eat sweet potatoes every day because you feel you have to?

Ultimately, my professor’s challenge wasn’t about giving up sweet potatoes but recognizing that the potatoes were never that sweet. Eating those burnt orange spuds everyday was not some “recovered” version of me living my best life. They were not a staple in my diet because I loved and enjoyed eating them but because they kept my eating disorder identity alive. I spent my early twenties nurturing Ed and building a relationship with him as I have with my closest friends and family, and as with many toxic relationships, as I started to distance myself, he found new ways to latch on. As I began to find some food freedom, he started using sweet potatoes to control my eating.

My writing assignment led me to question a lot of the patterns and behaviors that might still be Ed lingering around, and I have been increasingly confused by the role that this entity plays in my everyday life. I’m also constantly recognizing that I not only yearn for the bony version of myself, but sometimes, I also miss my sweet potatoes. I’m nostalgic for the simplicity, for the routine. Sometimes, I cry to Christian, begging him to just tell me what he wants to eat this week because I cannot possibly imagine it myself. I have no big Oprah aha moment to share about it, so I guess that’s ultimately why I’m here, still writing about sweet potatoes two years after I turned in my assignment.

What I can say is that I no longer eat sweet potatoes everyday—so that’s a win! And I also found my way back to enjoying the Sakosky’s sweet potato casserole. For years, I deprived myself of the heaping scoops I imagined devouring, but I’ve luckily returned to it because I have an aha moment every year when I take that first toffee-like bite.

If your family is usually a marshmallow sweet potato family, a) I’m sorry, and b) would you try this crunchy, caramely, extra creamy version this year? You might just find—like Christian did—that you had no idea how much you could love sweet potatoes (and not because of their glycemic index). Or you might, like Christian’s brother, Elliott, find that you really rather prefer the sweet and sticky marshmallow topping. But at least you’ll know for sure.

Until next time—love to you <3

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE:

Makes one 13"x9" pan

2 medium-sized sweet potatoes (about 2 pounds), roasted, skins discarded or 1 18 oz. can of yams, drained and rinsed

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

½ cup whole milk

1 teaspoon salt, used in two applications

1 stick unsalted butter, melted, used in two applications

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup light brown sugar

½ cup all-purpose flour

1 cup roughly chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a casserole dish well with pan spray.

In a large mixing bowl, mash the sweet potatoes until no large chunks remain and the texture is reminiscent of smashed potatoes. Add the granulated sugar, milk, eggs, ½ teaspoon salt, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons melted butter and whisk until the mixture is well combined. You shouldn't have to go too crazy, because the whisk helps work the liquids into the potatoes. Pour the mixture into the prepared casserole dish.

In a separate small mixing bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, pecans, ½ teaspoon salt and 6 tablespoons of melted butter. Stir together (or use your hands if you're like me and love the feeling of pie crusts and biscuits and other crumbly things between your fingers) until it starts to gather in clumps. Sprinkle evenly over top of the sweet potato mixture.

Bake, uncovered, for roughly 35-45 minutes or until the top browns and crisps up into a candy-like coating. Allow to cool for at least 5 minutes before digging in.