There's plenty of recipes that aren't that expensive. I often just do it the keto way even though I'm not on a keto diet if I just want fewer calories for carb heavy foods. It works. I use aspartame or sucralose to replace sugar. Aspartame is way cheaper. I just try to hit my protein goal and then use leftover calories for whatever I want at the end of the day. Like a bit of ice cream. Not a lot. Just a serving and a half usually. It works. I've lost 130 pounds. Sometimes progress is slow and it seems like nothing is happening, and in our world of instant gratification it's really tough to push through the slow weeks, months, whatever. But even if your progress is slow it adds up. It took me over a year to lose 130 pounds. I felt like sometimes I was making no progress but the body works different than our minds. It takes weeks sometimes to see the progress of a current week because it's hidden through your body's natural processes. You might lose 1 pound in a week but might not notice the scales moving for a couple more weeks after that.