Ask me anything about fat/weight loss....

Thank you so much for doing this. I'm a newbie here and feel a little awkward spamming the board with my questions, so having someone willing to hold still and let me fire a barrage is really awesome.

I had my first baby about a year and a half ago and have subsequently been heavier than I've ever been. I was a bit heavy even before that, but steadily losing weight due to a combination of being too broke to eat + walking EVERYWHERE. I exclusively nursed and was reassured that it would melt off the fat in the months after giving birth, but... yeah, didn't happen. I was 160 pounds (and 5'2") after the birth, and stayed that way until I got fed up a year or so later and did fanatical calorie tracking and 45 minutes of cardio daily. Lost about 10 pounds, but couldn't sustain obsessing over calories so much and the daily workouts, so fell off and gained back about five pounds over six months. A couple months ago, I started tracking calories and working out again.

I started off at about 1300 calories a day, since that's what all the calculators said, but I'm a stay-at-home mom chasing a toddler and still doing some nursing, so I started feeling like the calculators may not be very accurate for me. (I felt like I was starving to death and my mood and sleep went totally off-kilter.) So lately I've been eating 2000 calories + keeping up with workouts and seeing if it causes me to gain or lose, then adjusting from there. I'm not scared to gain a pound or two in the interest of figuring out the most I can eat and still lose. I gained a little under a pound in the first week, but I knew to expect that, so I'm seeing how week 2's weigh-in goes.

Hopefully that's enough background. Here are my questions!:

1. My workout regimen consists of four days of REALLY high-intensity circuit training for 30 minutes, high intensity cardio for 30 minutes on one day, and then two "rest" days where I do really low-impact stuff like yoga, bellydance, or ballet (dancing is one of my hobbies.)

Does the circuit training gives me enough strength training, since it's not exactly "lifting heavy"? I HAVE noticed significant strength gains in the past few weeks -- my upper body is stronger, my lunges and squats are going deeper and holding longer, and my formerly too-heavy toddler is getting lighter.

2. I currently am at the correct ratio for an hourglass figure (I'm just a "fat" hourglass) and I'd like to keep that. My understanding, though, is that overdoing it on exercises working the abs can create that square torso look that pilates instructors have and that I really don't want to develop. What's the best way to avoid getting the square look and keep the narrow waist definition?

3. How accurate have you found MFP's calorie counts? I cook from home most of the time and rely on MFP's estimates on the nutritional content of my recipes.

4. I'm a recovering soda addict, and while I've made a LOT of progress, I still have a soda a few times a week. I always record it and I'm staying within my calories. I'm aiming to quit entirely by the end of the year. Am I going to totally sabotage any progress I might make if I don't cut it out right away? With all the noise about high-fructose corn syrup, I'm half believing that I can workout all the time, eat well, and yet a soda a week will make me gain ten pounds. :P

5. Sometimes I have to do my workouts while my toddler's awake. Most of the time, I can push through it with her only being a little irritated at not having my undivided attention, but sometimes she gets into something, gets hungry, or needs comfort in the middle of my workout. I worry that these little interruptions are really cutting into the effectiveness of my workouts, but obviously I'm not going to ignore my daughter if she really needs me. Am I worrying overmuch, or am I really better off restarting the whole program until I can do it from start-to-finish with no interruptions?

I am so sorry for the wall of text. Thank you for holding still.