Four Years of Willpower...Then Utter Failure

I did not eat, drink, or smell gluten for four years. How did I maintain such willpower of steel? Easy. I feared the repercussions and imagined the worst. "Nothing tastes as good as feeling good feels." It all paid off as I slowly regained my health and energy.

Last week I decided to repair parts of my fence - the fence that blew down last winter. It was going to be a sunny, warm day and I estimated it might take me a half hour at the most. Well, construction for me is never that simple nor that fast. After starts and stops, missing supplies and equipment, four hours later the job was done. I was exhausted. The heat didn't help and only exacerbated the paralyzing fatigue. I cleaned up the area and drove my borrowed super-power drill back to my construction worker adviser, stumbling incoherently along in my brain fog and weakness.

My construction adviser is a root beer float junkie. I often bring him gifts of Virgil's Root Beer which is fairly safe, gluten-free, but sugar loaded as any soft drink should be. Still, it's healthier than any product one could find in our local grocery store. I drove up to his house and he's sitting on the back of his pickup truck holding a root beer float. In my exhaustion, all willpower I might have had went right in the toilet.

"OH! I want one! I need one!" I begged, crawling toward him in my overheated and physically exhausted body. I knew better, but I didn't care. I was like a woman stranded in the desert for too long.

He told me it's the last of the root beer, but he just made it, and handed the glass to me. A gigantic milkshake glass filled with Virgil's Root Beer mixed just right with vanilla ice cream. It took me about ten minutes to drink it all down. It was heavenly. I moaned with every gulp. I could not have imagined anything better at that very moment.

The next day I awoke with exhaustion. Not the physical exhaustion from the day before (although at first I had hoped it was), but full body right down to my core exhaustion. As you can imagine, the ice cream was not a healthy brand and instead poisoned with various chemicals and "natural flavors" (or, GLUTEN) besides the sugar and dairy that are not on my diet. It's been a week and I'm still paying. My whole body hurts, too. They say it takes three weeks to six months before the gluten will stop triggering an autoimmune response. I am hoping because my body wasn't saturated with gluten that this one exposure will only take three weeks. Praying.

No, it wasn't worth it, but it did taste so good!