5'4" 31 years old.. Needs help

So, what's helped me the most is seriously just being extra vigilant about CICO. At my biggest, I was at 306, and then my heart decided to throw a fit, and I got really serious about watching what I was eating. I just kind of followed the numbers as if it was some sort of odd religion - numbers before anything else, especially cravings.

It's hard, and some days you will fail. The most important thing is to get right back to it the next day. Eventually, you could even splurge one day and make up for it the next by fasting a little bit. For me, as long as the calories all balance out by the end of the week, I'm good.

I also refuse to weigh myself more than once a week. That can get discouraging when the scale doesn't seem to want to go anywhere but sometimes up, and make sure you weight yourself in the morning, around the same time every week. I weigh myself on Mondays.

Once I got down to a certain weight...I'd say around 270ish, CICO alone wasn't quite enough. I added walking and I bought a stationary bike on eBay for about $120. Since then, I've dropped another ~30 lbs, and I'm losing consistently outside of a plateau week every now and again.

For those cravings, I really like peanut butter-high in protein, easily accessible, and just plain simple. It can even be added to stuff to make things kind of sweet...like I'll get those small bags of plain instant oatmeal (about 150 cals each) and add a tbsp of natural peanut butter (90) and sometimes a small shot of hershey's chocolate syrup (~45), and that's kind of a sweet snack/meal that will actually keep me feeling full for a pretty long time.

One of the biggest tips that really works is just to stop buying the stuff that's hurting your diet. Have a weakness for chocolate chip cookies? Either cut down on how many you buy or stop buying them as often and see how that works.

All that said, as long as you're watching your calories and throwing in some cardio, you should lose weight. You can almost literally eat whatever you want, as long as the portions are appropriate in relation to your calorie intake.

Weight loss is a tricky feat, but it can be done. It just takes willpower. That is how I've had success so far.

Good luck! You can do it.

One thing that has helped me is to think of it, not as a diet, but to think of it as a lifestyle change to get healthy. Next time you find your hand in the cookie jar, figure out what you are feeling exactly at that moment and ask yourself if you are really hungry or are you bored, feeling stressed, upset about something. Don't eat your emotions. And don't drink your calories - it's one thing to have a beer and enjoy it, but at 5 you are not enjoying the beer, you are drinking empty calories.
I find that when you get really conscious and in the moment, you'll make better choices. Remember that you are doing this for you, not for anyone else, because you want to get healthy and be around to see the grandkids.