90 days later and no lost inches....

Do not give up You are on the right track.

All of us are different. Regular working out would not only may you look better but you will feel better and more strong [which I think are good enough reasons to keep doing it].

Do eat back your exercise calories. I hope your 1,200 is after eating back the exercise calories. Otherwise its very difficult to lose weight and I found that the hard way.

Good luck

Since you're in a healthy weight range you could probably benefit from upping your calories and focusing on serious weight training (heavy weights, low reps, compound moves) and body composition. Cut down on the cardio for awhile.

I was thinking the same thing. Your weight seems about right for your height. Maybe it's time to focus on building muscle to lower your body fat%. At 114 lbs, you couldn't have all that much more weight to lose to stay in the healthy range.

Since you're in a healthy weight range you could probably benefit from upping your calories and focusing on serious weight training (heavy weights, low reps, compound moves) and body composition. Cut down on the cardio for awhile.

I was thinking the same thing. Your weight seems about right for your height. Maybe it's time to focus on building muscle to lower your body fat%. At 114 lbs, you couldn't have all that much more weight to lose to stay in the healthy range.

+2

and how far Under goal? You don't want to keep going much under 1200

I usually end up with maybe 100 or 200 under? I should recheck my diary. I've been focusing on losing inches more around my waist and not much anywhere else. I can feel and see the difference in my arms, quads and calfs.

So eating 1000 to 1100 in total? That means Gross BTW, not net, when I say in total.

How exactly are you focusing losing inches more around your waist?

Or you mean that is the only place you happen to be measuring?

Because ya, just as you can't spot reduce, can't spot measure either, gotta measure many spots.

I am going to have to follow that. I didn't even realize I wasn't eating back my exercise calories. I will definitely have to adjust a few things!

You will likely have to adjust what you mean by "clean eating".

If it's so restrictive you can't really see yourself following it forever - then it will fail you eventually or often enough to cause problems.

There is nothing wrong with the "bad" items you listed, in moderation, and many go for the 80/20 method, 80% "good" whatever that means to you, 20% "bad" whatever that means to you.

Means you can plan in some of what you enjoy every day many times. Easier to enjoy reasonable amount when you know you get more tomorrow.

I've dropped maybe 5lbs altogether. I do look less bloated and feel better,

Also, do you eat back your exercise calories? 1200 is low if you're doing intense workouts. Make sure your body's not holding on to what it can for dear life.

This is what I was thinking. If you try to do too much, you risk your body fighting to hold on to your fat/energy stores. If you're not dropping the kind of weight you think you should when you factor in your diet and exercise, it could mean that your metabolism has slowed down to compensate for the deficit which makes the deficit smaller or virtually non existent.

According to the calculator I've used with success ( http://www.freedieting.com/tools/calorie_calculator.htm ), you should probably add 150-250 calories/day to your diet (1350-1450) if you're working out 5 times a week.

I know it's counter-intuitive, but after I found myself in a plateau, I realized that I was eating too little and that my metabolism had slowed to balance out my diet and exercise. I had to eat above maintenance for a week or so to get my metabolism fired up again and when I started my diet again, I made sure my calories weren't getting too low.

I don't do crossfit, but I run a lot. I burn around 4,500 calories a week from exercise. As a result, I don't eat much of a deficit at all. I eat almost as many calories as I would if I were just trying to maintain my weight and not exercising at all (there's about a 60 cal/day difference). Meaning virtually all of my weight loss is coming from exercise and very little is coming from my diet. If I were eating at a decent deficit too, I'd risk putting my body into starvation mode because it'd be too much and my body would slam on the breaks (actually, that's what happened when I plateaued). So if you're doing intense exercise 5 times a week, you should probably at least be eating closer to whatever your maintenance/no exercise calories would be (probably a little less than 1400).

FYI, you don't need to eat every two hours to keep your metabolism high. It takes a couple of days without food for the metabolism to start to slow in response.

Thank you!! I just went into my Profile and adjusted my goal to something more realistic. I had it at losing 2lbs a week, and it put me at 1,200. I've upped it my calorie intake now! Everyone has been super, super helpful!!!

Well, you are short, so you are going to get smaller goal no matter what.

So even selecting 1/2 lb weekly, with 250 cal deficit, off non-exercise maintenance of 1454, still means 1204.

But it's the eating back exercise calories that will allow room for improvement from the exercise.

Now, it may be that your non-exercise daily life is more active the sedentary desk job sitting 45 hrs with commute, in which case Lightly Active could be more honest if that is the case.

That program is probably burning easily 500-600 per hour.