[midwife]

There is a certain irony that it can be diifficult to lose weight when training for distance events. When I was training for my half-marathon, my weight stayed the same, but my lean mass went down and my body fat % went up! Sadness....

For someone so active and who is a pretty healthy weight, I think I would recommend making sure that you eat a junkfood, processed food-free diet 90% of the time and maybe consider swapping out a couple of longer cardio sessions for HIIT training. But it depends what your goals are. If a distance tri is your goal, train for that, but don't be surprised if the scale is stubborn. If fat loss is your goal, try HIIT.

Do come join us in the exercise forums! There are threads for runners, tri atheletes, weight lifting, etc. You have gotten some good advice from some of the more athletic chickies on the board. The kind of exercise and goals you have in mind might take a little different approach than general run-of-the-mill weight loss strategies. I second the recommendation for featherweights too. Also, please come down to the Operation Take 5-10 thread in Maintainers. We have some pretty impressive athletic type folks in there, swimmers, triathletes, runners (ahem, not quite to ennay or mkroyer's levels, but I get some mileage done myself).

ETA: Went back and reread....training for an ironman is pretty impressive. I wouldn't worry about weight loss per se right now, just fueling and training for the ironman. You may drop scale pounds or you may not, but from a biological perspective, change is pretty tough on our bodies. Weight loss is change. Ironman training is change. I'd do one at a time.
Now it might be interesting for you to track your body fat % during this time just to see what happens. Oohhh, let us know how the tri goes!

[mkroyer]

I also apologize...didnt know you were an athlete (hey! Thats pertinent info to have and definitley changes things!)
Small, coniditioned female athletes.....yikes...... we hav it rough. Society and our sports push us and push us to be smaller and skinney..... It works to a marathoners advantage to have as little fat as possible! On the other hand, once you become so conditioned, at that point not only are you battling those last pesky pounds, but, as mentioned above, you are dealing with a severly slowed and efficient metabolism that has learned to finction under sever stress (physiologically) off of very *few* calories anyway...... ITs a double edged sword. WE instinctively try dropping calories more, exercising more, but the scale doesnt budge. Its awful, and frustrating..... I believe i said this above, and have definitely mentioned it before, but the ONLY WAY i was able to lose that last bit of weight was by sstopping all training. for about 6 weeks, and DILLIGENTLY counting cals, going really really low. under 1200. only THEN did i start droping fat, and it was STILL awfully slow......
One thing that CAN and did help me, was learning to take in adequate PRE workout nutrition. Even though i was trying to be in a deficit, i made sure to eat a high carb/protein shake before my workouts. Also EFAs......and to be honest BCAAs.... and lots.... anyways, sorry about the mixups based off the original post. My initial answer/solution still stands though.. no fat loss = caloric equilibrium If you are eating 1500 cals a day (dilligently tracked) and you arent losing weight, even with training, then your body has learned to operate off of 1500 cals a day. its as simple as that (but of course, much more comlpex than that!) My gut though, based off your sample menu, is that you are taking in a lot more than that. I think if you try really tracking, and cutting down your calories to ACTUALLY around 1500, or 1400 or whatever, you will see SLOW results!

Good luck