X-posted in my Achalasia Support Group

--- In achalasia@yahoogroups.com, K wrote:

I'm with you here - salad without lettuce and sandwich without bread! I get very odd looks also!

K [. . .]

K: Too funny! Years ago, I realized I was (and am) basically allergic to carbohydrates, and became an Atkins girl. I've been asking for bacon cheeseburgers without a bun in restaurants for more than thirty years, lol! Before that, I realized I'm not really a drinker (I did and do still occasionally, but somehow would rather spend my calories elsewhere unless I *want* to get drunk, and never needed to more than once or twice a year), so used to get a cup of coffee from the kitchen just to have something in my hand at a cocktail party (otherwise helperbees bug you to death with, "Can I get you something?" -- Prolly, a glass of ginger ale would have worked as well). Guess what I'm saying is that for most of my adult life I've been ready, willing and able to walk my own path foodwise and accept that it made me "odd." Perhaps the difference is that *that* was my choice; the food "rationing" with Achalasia is not, and I find myself getting pretty pissy at times about the additional changes I've had to make because of it.

Irony, is that these past six months in trying to adjust to it, the lo-carb way of life I adapted to so many years ago, and so well (I can make low carb waffles!) has fallen through that giant hole of starvation avoidance! Virtually everything I CAN eat now is close to total carb! And it shows (thank goodness, for the time being), in the four weeks since the Heller, I've gained five pounds! I need to stop now. Now! I didn't ask for the weight loss, but it has been very good for my walking, breathing, hip and knee joints, and I'd HATE to lose that. So last night, was trying to figure out how to get back to low carb. . . . I can pretty much keep my odd little salads, because there's not much carb in lettuce. But a good many things that were/are staples, I'm currently unable to eat -- bacon cheeseburgers (with or without buns), roast beef, steak, roast pork, pork chops, tuna fish, kippered herring, I can't have, while what I CAN eat: potatoes, sweet potatoes, crackers of any kind, toast, ice cream are death to a low carb life. (Well not exactly true, I've learned how to make low carb crackers, biscuits, and a kind of flat bread)(but no more store boughten ones, lol!) I feel like one of those lab rats that has to learn a new maze to run perfectly to get fed. ACK!!

Food habits tend to be pretty rigid for the human race: most of our foreign food restaurants in this country were started by immigrants who needed food to taste *right* to them, and were intended to provide a place to eat for other immigrants. We're a bit luckier: we've adopted a lot of "foreign" cuisine as our own (at least on occasion: Chinese, Sushi, Italian, Mexican, Greek, Middle Eastern, even African. I guess I'll have to thank my mother, may she rest peacefully, for pushing us to try new things. We certainly ate from a much broader spectrum of food and food styles than anyone I knew when I was growing up in the forties and fifties in the Inter-Mountain West. And no fussing tolerated: with nine kids, no special orders available. Artichokes and avocados, mung bean thread, Cuttlefish, tongue, calf brains. . . . regular little gourmands we were, grin. But all in all it prolly makes it easier for me to adapt my eating habits than most.

I recall reading a few years back that a mid-Western/Heartland nursing home, in an effort to provide healthier food for its residents hired a really good chef. . . . And the residents went on strike!! They WANTED meatloaf and mashed potatoes with greasy gravy and mac and cheese, and grilled cheese sammiches, the hell with pâté de foie gras, and beef stroganoff!

Live long and prosper kiddles!

Julie in the Wilds of Wonderful West Virginia!