Thanks Screech and others so far, find the feedback and responses very positive and it's interesting hearing other peoples stories as i know i am not the only person who has been in this boat
One thing that might help you, is to better understand the processes that actually lead to weight gain in the first place.
People gain excess weight not just because they overeat, but because for some reason the natural mechanisms of satisfaction don't seem to work very well, when people eat certain diets. What I mean by this is that people eat because they feel hungry, yet - they continue to eat even though they've consumed more than the required amount of energy they need, so they store the excess and some foods are more likely to be stored than others.
This tends to happen with people who have junk food diets, if you eat fast food, sweets and chocolate on a daily basis - whilst you're getting the right level of caloric intake your body needs to operate, calories from those foods don't contain much in the way of useful nutrients, they're mostly designed to provide pleasure only, to demonstrate this - consider the following scenario;
Most people with a mild appetite can easily sit in the cinema and eat a full tub of Pringles (around 1000 calories) without batting an eyelid, crucially - around 30-60 minutes later they still feel hungry.
However,
Take that same 1000 calories, but replace it with about 5 or 6 chicken breasts - that person is doing pretty well, if they make it past number 5, because by this point they're going to feel pretty stuffed, they're also going to continue to feel full for much longer, which makes it much less likely they'll be interested in eating snacks or eating anything else.
This happens, because the protein from the chicken causes your fat cells to release a hormone called Leptin, this is essentially a feedback mechanism which tells your brain "I'm full, please stop eating" this happens because the chicken breast contains nutrients (such as protein, and others) which trigger the body to produce this response.
The key to weight loss, is to formulate a meal plan which
provides satisfaction, it's no good going from 3000 calories a day of junk, then cutting it down to 1500 calories a day of junk - because you'll be getting zero satisfaction, constantly feel hungry and will be essentially more malnourished than before - making the urge to go back to old habits much harder to defeat.
At the end of the day, a calorie is not a calorie - different foods are metabolised in different ways, at different speeds - by sticking to real food and removing junk food from your diet - you're more likely to be able to physically eat less, whilst feeling more satisfied - if you can sustain this, you will lose the intense cravings you have for junk food, over time.