Your Own Food Culture
One of the most significant problems with any diet overhaul is the psychological addiction that people have to their 'comfort foods'. Everyone is part of a culture, and part of that culture includes foods that are traditionally given in certain circumstances like chicken noodle soup when ill or ice cream when depressed. Getting past these seemingly-inborn preferences is a big part of the diet challenge.My own take is to start your own food culture. Trying to make wheat-like stuff out of non-wheat is possible, but to date most of it is made with other starchy flours plus xanthan gum, or eggs. That is the American food heritage: wheat flour, white sugar, and chemical additives.
Here's the good news: there are a lot of other food heritages, where they never heard of such ingredients. It's actually easier to just adopt one of those. Go 'Paleo'. Go Asian. Go African. Go Indonesian or Vietnamese or Japanese. Pretend you are a refugee and all you have to cook is a chicken and some sweet potatoes. Or that you have to cook on your BBQ every day, because your stove broke.
Anyway, that's what my wife and I did in our first days as low-carb dieters, and it actually turned out to be kinda fun. Eating nothing except meat and whole fruits or vegies (in any kind of combination we could make from them).
We do make more "fun" stuff these days, but that is still my baseline: pretend I actually hunted or gathered the ingredients. Food is cheaper and also tastier that way, and it takes your mind off "oh wow, there is nothing I can eat". And seriously, if you have a rack of nice smoked ribs, what else does a person need?
They say that two weeks make a habit. By a great coincidence, two weeks is also how long it takes your body to get over the lingering effects of sugar overdose. So take two weeks, create your own personal food culture, and live it up! Just choose the right diet, and your body will love you for it!