@imallears : you echoed a lot of the feelings I have about people who simply don’t care about their weight. My parents and most of my aunts and uncles were moderately overweight - as in size 14, generally. One uncle skinny as a rail, one aunt slender, and one morbidly obese. She died dismally of congestive heart failure, not a pleasant way to go. So there is some family history that made me very aware of watching your weight. Another family example: have one grandson who was perhaps 15 to 20 lbs. overweight by the time he was 14. It just crept up on him. Any gentle nudge to put the brakes on his eating did not work. Until: during some school-sponsored summer lecture he attended a presentation by a physician detailing the effects of juvenile diabetes. Guess what? From that day on he simply stopped eating any kind of sweets, cold turkey. He’s now a very healthy looking 16 yr. old.

Regarding food choices: a lot has to do with the triggers - salt, sugar, fat. I read a book some time ago explaining how the fast food and packaged goods industry sneaks in extra hidden amounts of these ingredients to hook people. Not easy to escape the lure! Other than commercially baked bread (the artisanal kind, from Lidl, mostly), cheeses, and - yep, we partake - cold cuts, I hardly buy any prepared food or meals. I make my own marinara sauce, own enchilada sauce, own taco seasoning, etc...May cave to “light” canned soups once in a while, or vegetable spring rolls, but mostly I cook from scratch, with fresh ingredients. I’l lucky to have the time and interest to do so. Regarding cost: smart shopping and planning ahead can make home cooking ridiculously cheap. For example, recently an up-scale grocery chain has offered roasted chickens for $ 5.00 on Thursdays. Enough for one meal (with a nice big salad, and some garlic bread), then I remove and dice all the remaining meat and make a white chicken chili (onion, garlic, canned diced chilies, spices, rinsed cannelini beans, low salt chicken broth, a hint of sharp cheddar at the end). So 2 meals, for 2 people, for under $10.00 = $2.50 per person, per meal.
Just saying.....

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