If you're 5'6 and have never been a healthy weight

5'6.5" here and I have been chubby/overweight/fat as far back as I can remember!

I have a memory of being four years old and stepping on the scale and weighing 4 stone (56lbs) and thinking it was funny that my weight in stones was the same as my age. Looking back, I now realise that this is far too heavy for a child of that age.
I also have a memory of being in line for school lunch when I was around 6 or 7, and asking the dinner lady what I should have to eat as I was on a diet. Again, a kid that age shouldn't even know what it means to be on a 'diet'. Pretty all of the women in my family are overweight and I was brought up around people obssessing over diets and calories and SlimFast shakes. I haven't dug too deep but I'm guessing that this is where it came from.

Anyways, fast forward to today and I'm around 190lbs I think. At my heaviest I've been around 210lbs, and lowest as an adult I have been is 180lbs. I have tried literally every diet program I have come across and had more gym memberships than I can remember. I just seem to keep moving up and down along a 20lb scale!

Recently I moved from the UK to Canada, and I have been roughly following a guide called The Gabriel Method, which looks at the deep rooted and evolutionary reasons for weight gain. I haven't bought any bathroom scales since moving, but all of the clothes are falling off of me! I haven't been terribly hard on myself with restricting food, as I have found that as soon as you tell yourself something is banned - it makes the craving 10x harder. I eat three clean, healthy meals a day, snack on fruit and drink water. However if an occassion comes up, or someone in the office bakes cookies, or my friends want to share a bottle of wine on a Saturday night I'll allow myself to take part without the guilt. I have been running 3 times a week and usually do at least one full day of snowboarding at the weekend.

I'm going to quietly work away at what I have been doing, without any emotional turbulance as has become commonplace when trying to shift the lard, and hopefully I'll continue to see a change! My goal is to get to around 140lbs or a US/CAN size 10/12.

But yeah, it's tricky to know what to aim for if you've never been a healthy weight...it's also tricky to believe that you can get there! Here's to unchartered territory! :drinker:

I too am 5'6", I weigh 183 at the moment and fluctuating.lol. My goal weight is 160. I am certain that I will fluctuate then as well so 160 to 165 is a good range for me. I am a large frame and noticed that at 150 I look a little under nourished, at this age anyway ( I am 27), when I was 150 and in highschool I looked perfectly fine.