Making better food choices?

Eat nothing but Oreos for a week. Pretty much any choice made thereafter will be by definition "better."

Good luck.

Personally, I equate eating calories to spending money. I know if I have a budget I have to spend it wisely. Do I want to spend everything on that lovely chocolate cake only to be left with little calories to spend food on and an empty stomach? Or do I want to go the economic route and eat a sweet yogurt that will satisfy my craving and leaving me with calories to eat more later to feel more full?
I have a mother who loves to make her amazing and unhealthy desserts. They are my ultimate weakness. Whenever she makes some I will either get out of the kitchen or decide to have a tiny portion and dealing with not having more.

My doctor gave me the tip to have one binge day a month. When that day comes you can eat as much of whatever your favorite food is. Even if the calories for that day equates to 3k, that's equivalent to only adding on 100 calories per day for the month.

Also, if you are able to, purchase all the healthy food you need. I know it's especially hard to keep your cravings tame when you have nothing healthy to eat in the house so you think you have no choice but to eat those things. So, make sure there's always something healthy in the house. Also, keep diverse choices around the house for every type of craving. Craving sweet chocolate? Have Weight watchers brownies or chocolate mouse whipped yogurt [or my new favorite, Dole banana dippers covered in dark chocolate and almond pieces]. Craving salty? Have pretzels and hummus around or even saltines.

One more thing. As most will probably say around here: If you're really craving it that bad then have it; in moderation.

Hope that helps! I kind of dumped all of my knowledge about this subject into a huge wall of text :P

I see you haven't posted much so you may not realize this but there are a lot of folks on there with eating disorders so without knowing your height, the first reaction to your seemlingly severe low weight goal is that you have an eating disorder. Hopefully you can understand that and maybe it would be helpful to post your height somewhere on your profile or mention it in the future if you're looking for advice.

Sure reaching for ready made junk is easier! I'm pretty sure that's one of the issues with the obesity epidemic. Why cook your own food when you can order out, go to the drive thru, etc? No muss, no fuss.

However, there are alternative that can still make your life easy. Planning and prepping are the key to good weeks for me. I take a half hour or so every Saturday morning and think about what I'm going to make for meals for the next 7 days - and I mean all meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Then I make a list of everything I need and head to WalMart and the local grocery store. Then I spend part of the day Sunday doing all my prep. Whipping up snacks, cooking oatmeal in the crockpot, making breakfast casserole, etc. Takes me maybe 2 minutes max to pack my food Mon-Fri that way. How much easier can it get?!

So think about it - try to prep and plan as much as you can so the easy to reach for things also include healthy snacks. Carrot sticks, apples, bananas, celery and peanut butter or hummus, etc.

You can do this!

You have to find ways to make good options at least as accessible and easy to choose than bad options. Having good, fresh food already prepared and ready to grab can really help. Just doing things like having carrot sticks, grapes, whatever you like already washed and in the refrigerator will increase the likelihood that you'll reach for those instead of junk. (I personally hate the term "junk food," because it's all just food, but you know what I mean).

It looks like you're mostly vegetarian, is that right? There are a ton of good veggie options that are easy to grab and will give you some good nutrition -- string cheese, individual yogurt cups, carrots with hummus, stuff like that. It seems like you're getting a lot of your calories from peanut butter, and there are some days where it looks like you pretty much only ate peanut butter. What's going on there? Peanut butter is a good source of veggie protein and fat, but on its own it just doesn't have enough volume to fill up your stomach. Could it be as simple as you wanting to eat things that are less healthy because you're just hungry?