Starting from Scratch

Firstly, don't be so hard on yourself. Mistakes may have been made but they are now in the past and nothing can be done about that. Look to the future and use this as your motivation for change! It is apparent that you want to make big changes but you need to set realistic goals that will keep you motivated. Small changes add up over the long haul and you must always remember this.

Healthy eating doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it out to be. The first thing I'd highly recommend is to figure out what your resting metabolic rate is. Or rather, how many calories does your body burn off without accounting for exercise? There are plenty of resources on the web that can help you figure that out. Once you have that you will want to create a caloric deficit in order to lose weight. The basic rule of thumb is to reduce your caloric intake by 500 calories per day to lose approximately two pounds per week. Or you can you use exercise to create that caloric deficit by burning those excess calories. It is best to use both exercise and diet to achieve this as it makes it more attainable. As far as an actual diet plan is concerned I would recommend making minor changes to your current diet. When we make drastic changes it is very difficult to keep up without reverting back to our old ways. Since I do not know what your current diet consists of I can't make any specific recommendations, but try and make use of common sense when selecting what you use to fuel your body. For example, 100 grams of potatoes are obviously a better choice than 100 grams of potato chips.

You know you can reverse it. Quit blaming yourself and get down to business weighing and logging your food. You can do it again!