How can I find a nutritional balance?

Hi triathlon community!

I've been trying to find a balance lately with nutrition and tri training and would appreciate some input.

I began tri training last summer as a means to loose weight (and fell in love!).  As a female, I started quite high at 210 lbs and lost weight healthfully last spring/summer/fall through my training program.  Currently, I weigh 145 lbs and am training about 7 hours a week at this point if I don't miss.  I struggle to train consistently (lots of bricks to try to make up for missing) because I'm balancing graduate school and work as well.  I track intake calories most days still and am a healthy eater (no processed crap, low sugar, no junk).

So that's the background, and here's the issue:  

I still need to loose weight because I have a lot of belly/torso fat.  Yet if I restrict my calories enough to where I'm actually losing (1200-1400 per day, depending on training), I am definitely not getting enough.  I feel exhausted in the afternoon and to the point that my focus intellect suffers.  As you can imagine, training is  difficult with this fatigue, contributing to missed workouts.  So of course I realized I'm clearly not eating enough to sustain myself at this level of training.  So my solution was to experiment with not tracking calories and just eating what my body needed.  My training was great, but I hit a weight plateau and then started to gain..

My body is mismatched from top to bottom, and I really do need to loose torso fat to hit optimum fitness (see photo http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150729236773307&set=a.97552303306.87247.667648306&type=1&theater).  So I'm wondering, basically, what people's thoughts and experiences are.  How much do you eat in terms of calories?  What's the breakdown of carbs/protein/fat.  How can you find a balance between weight loss and energy levels without wasting a bunch of time playing around?  How do you spread out your calorie intake during the day with training?

Thanks!