Any form of exercise will help you lose weight as long as you maintain a reasonable diet. Swimming is a demanding but low-impact form of exercise that can certainly aid weight loss. The simple rule of weight loss is that if you burn more calories than you consume in a day, you will lose weight. World-class swimmers may even struggle to eat enough to maintain weight due to the demands of swimming training.
Numbers
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Nutrition.gov website, you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you consume to lose one pound of weight. To maximize your weight loss, cut calories by watching what you eat, while increasing calories burned through exercise. Swimming more will definitely help, but the amount of time you spend swimming is not the only thing to consider.
Speed
How fast you swim governs how many calories you burn over a period of time. According to research data published in the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, a 130-pound person will burn 413 calories swimming slow freestyle laps for an hour. The same person swimming fast freestyle laps for the same period will burn around 590 calories.
Intensity
It can be hard to swim at maximum speed for an hour. Swimming fast for half an hour would burn fewer calories than if you swam more slowly but kept at it for a whole hour. To maximize your calories burned, extend your ability to swim at a higher intensity for longer periods of time by varying your speed. Alternate by swimming one length of the pool at maximum intensity, then slowly on the next length to recover. Consider the Tabata protocol, where you work at maximum intensity for a short period then take a brief rest. Do this by swimming a length as fast as you can, resting 10 seconds at the end, and repeating for as long as you can.
Body Weight
You also need to consider how much you weigh. A smaller person consumes fewer calories doing the same swimming stroke as a bigger person. For example, the 130-pound person swimming fast freestyle laps burned 590 calories in an hour: a 205-pound person would burn 931 calories during the same period.
Other Factors
How good a swimmer you are will affect your weight loss. A complete novice thrashing about in the shallow end burns a lot of energy, even though he is going nowhere. As your technique improves, your stroke becomes more efficient and you will burn fewer calories even though you swim faster. Different strokes also place different demands on your body. The 130-pound man swimming fast freestyle burns around 590 calories in an hour, equal to his efforts swimming breaststroke but fewer than the 649 burned swimming butterfly for an hour.
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