Admittedly, the first weeks and months of LC are difficult - getting through induction flu (most likely the source of your headaches), getting used to NOT automatically reaching for carby stuff for a snack, and becoming acclimated to a lowered appetite (proteins and fats are far more filling and long lasting than carbs).


As you go along in your LC journey though, you will most likely find that your desire for bread, beer, and ice cream, etc will begin to diminish. In fact, the longer you can stay away from high carb foods, if you then eat something, it often doesn't taste as good as you remember. The longer you stay LC, the worse those things taste, to the point that starchy foods actually end up tasting more like cardboard, and sugary foods can taste sickeningly sweet in comparison to truly LC food.

This is the point where I am now. If I accidentally get ahold of a tiny sliver of pizza crust while I'm picking off the toppings to eat, or am eating at a restaurant and they've slathered some kind of starchy and/or sugary sauce on my meat or veggies, I absolutely HATE the way it tastes. Yuck. Makes me wonder how I ever used to eat that stuff.

Having said that, there are recipes for lots of alternatives to high carb foods - this site and the internet can provide a treasure trove of recipes to try. (one of my current favorites is chicken and asparagus with 3 cheeses. There's a video, but you can just scroll down to the recipe at the bottom)



As far as pizza is concerned, at first I just avoided it, period. Then I tried making LC crusts, starting out with a giant "oopsie" crust, then since making that is so time consuming, I switched to making an omelet/frittata type base. As mentioned above, if we order pizza, I will just pick the toppings off of it, and eat those. After a time, I finally realized that since I wasn't eating the crust anyway, I didn't really need any kind of crust or base at all, since what I was really wanting was only the satisfying flavors of the toppings - to me those are what really makes it pizza, the crust is just a carrier. It's so easy to spoon a thin coating of some no sugar no starch tomato sauce (I buy the little 4 oz cans since they seem less likely to have added sugars or starches - but check the ingredients to be sure) in the bottom of a shallow casserole dish, and layer all your favorite toppings and seasonings on that. Bake or nuke until heated through, and the cheese is melty. Granted, you can't pick this up and fold it in half to eat it with your hands, but as far as flavor is concerned, it's all the best parts of the pizza, very satisfying, and best of all, no carb cravings 2 hours later.