Jess,

The biggest thing for me was my Vitamix. I'm no promoter, but the coffee smoothie I make in the mornings keeps me feeling full from 6:30am to about 10:30am. It has around 350 calories, but is very filling and very nutritious. I also wasted some money and saw a dietician who said the only change she would make for me was to make sure I ate something every 3 hours or when I was hungry regardless of how many calories MFP said I could have. The only stipulation was that I needed to have 7g of protein with each snack or meal minimum. I started with a goal of 1600 calories, but found that with exercise I could fairly easily keep that below 1400 by not eating back all of my exercise calories burned. I put 1400 in for my own number now, and with my normal eating I can stay below 1400. Add me as a friend and you can see my diary to get an idea on what I eat on a daily basis. You may also want to consider not taking ambien if it causes sleep eating. If you get on a good exercise routine not too late at night, you may find it easier to get to sleep at night. Also cut out the caffeine by 2pm at the latest in the afternoon.

-Ray

I've found that a turkey burger with mozzarella cheese is surprisingly filling. That may help with the eating, I'm not sure how Ambien works.

For motivation, do not look at the total number of pounds. Set various mini goals. Mine were drop through the stages of obesity (started at morbid, dropped to severe, am currently 5 pounds out from being just regular overweight). After that, drop below 200. I'll sort something out for under 200 later. So pick something easier to get to than your ultimate goal, so you can have little victories throughout the process.