is there hope for me?
 

i recently made the decision to really cut down on my carb intake, but i'm having some trouble making sure i get all of the protein and other good stuff i need. I dont eat meat (my stomach doesn't tolerate it) and i cant eat nuts and other hard foods because of my TMJ. any suggestions on healthy snacks and such that i can do? right now i'm using fruit and soy yogurt (oh yea, i'm also lactose intolerant) as snacks but i know i shouldnt be eating that much fruit. i take a protein drink and supplements every day, i'm not sure what else i can do. thanks for any advice you can give me!

Wow you've come so far already way to go!
What about eggs? beans? hummus with veggies is good.

Beans + rice caontains all the amino acids, I'm told. As a matter of fact, any legume plus any grain is supposed to be good. The vegetarian world lives on it, primarily. Oh, learn Indian cooking! Fabulously scrumptious, and vegetarian! I recommend any cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey. It might be a little bit of a challenge to stay at 20g, but remember most Americans heat hundreds of grams a day, if not thousands, not mere tens. Declare yourself on OWL, and I bet you can find ways to eat extremely healthily and get sufficient protein, at a reasonable number of grams per day.

Oh, I forgot: if you think you might be able to tolerate almond flour, check out Linda's Low Carb recipes, esp. the baked goods using almond flour and flax meal or carbolose flour. And there's Carbolose flour (a lo-carb flour), and Carbquick (use like Bisquick) to make yummy pancakes and waffles and such. You can buy sugar-free syrup in any reasonably complete grocery store. Look at netrition, esp. Dixie Carb Counters mixes. All this stuff has nutritional values posted. All of it contains protein, and is low carb. I have a muffin for breakfast almost every day, and if I am really hungry for a snack after dinner, I have one then too. They're a life saver for me.

awesome, thanks for the tips! (rice and beans is like, one of my all time favorite meals)

Alas, rice is anything but lo-carb. I have some wild rice, should look it up and see how many carbs it has.
And of course brown rice is better than white.

can you have goat dairy? I understand many lactose intolerant people can tolerate goat dairy and there are so many good goat cheeses and other products available now.
Congratulations on your great progress!