Am I eating enough to lose weight

You're at an extremely healthy weight for your height and age. Have you considered shifting your goals away from weight loss to other goals? Such as getting stronger, faster, having better posture, becoming a better dancer, etc.?

You should be losing the last few pounds slowly so that's a good thing - as is the exercise you are doing.
You absolutely aren't wasting your time!

If your body is in a consistent deficit it cannot hold on to weight long term, you may have periods when weight loss stalls - that's totally normal.

Suggest trying to be consistent and make a small reduction in calories - then it's a matter of patience I'm afraid. Look at it as practice for maintenance!

At 144lb and 5'7", you don't have much weight to lose. Probably you won't lose a pound a week. And your diary is very inconsistent, so you may not be as accurate as you think you are.

Personally I prefer to eat more on big exercise days and your exercise calorie estimates look reasonable - maybe circuit training looks high but that's a devilishly hard thing to estimate (even with gadgets).

In the end calorie balance is the thing - whether you alter that by eating back less exercise calories or adjusting your base calorie setting is personal preference.

Do you mean you're worried your body is not getting enough calories, i.e. It's in starvation mode?

claireholden37 wrote: »

Yes that's what I have been thinking . I originally started by doing slimming world and I found the more I ate the more I lost so taking a bit to get used to calorie counting

I always try my best to reach my calorie goal + eat enough food to make up for exercise, otherwise your body is in starvation mode and when you eat, it deals with the calories you take in differently, which basically makes you less likely to lose fat and more likely to lose muscle weight - the weight you don't want to lose (I study biology at uni so I can explain the physiology better if you ask).
If your settings are set to lose weight then your calorie goal should be lower than your BMR, and that's where the calorie deficiency is coming from that will enable you to lose fat healthily. A deficiency of 3500 calories = 1lb of fat loss.
I understand it can be hard to reach calorie goals, I'm only on 1200 a day because I'm 5' 6 and 137lbs, just losing a few pounds I put on in order to prevent becoming overweight and get back to how I was, and sometimes I struggle to meet that and worry my body isn't getting enough for effective weight loss.
I would recommend the diet I'm on, it's 35% carbs, 35% fat, 30% protein, and eating higher protein percentages in your diet is proven to boost your metabolism, meaning more effective weight loss. People say calories are just calories but they need to read into the science behind metabolism to understand that the body deals with carbs and protein differently because they are different molecules (again, biology student).
I hope this helps!