You need to eat fewer calories than your body burns off if you want to lose weight. The equation may seem straightforward, but weight loss isn't always as simple. Your weight loss efforts may fail if you don't know how many calories your body burns each day or if you don't know how many calories you should try to burn each day.
Calorie Burn Rate
Your metabolism is what causes your body to convert food and drink into energy. The calories you consume combine with oxygen and release energy for functions ranging from breathing to blood circulation and cell repair, according to MayoClinic.com. Your basal metabolic rate, or BMR, is the number of calories your body uses to carry out such functions. Not all BMRs are the same. Men tend to burn more calories than women, younger people tend to burn off more calories than older people and those who have larger bodies tend to burn off more calories than people with smaller bodies. Your BMR accounts for approximately 60 to 75 percent of the calories you burn each day, food processing accounts for another 10 percent, and the amount of physical activity you get accounts for the rest.
Calories Per Pound
You would need to cut your current calorie intake by about 3,500, or about 500 calories per day, to burn off 1 lb. of fat in a week. To lose 2 lbs. in a week, you would need to double that rate. You don't have to burn fat through diet alone, however. You may be able to get away with only cutting out 250 calories per day if you spend 30 to 60 minutes per day burning off calories through cardiovascular exercises such as jogging, dancing and biking.
Minimum Daily Needs
You may not need to reduce your current calorie intake by 500 to 1,000 calories a day if you're only eating 2,000 calories in a day. Men shouldn't eat fewer than 1,500 daily calories and women shouldn't dip below 1,200 daily calories unless under medical supervision, according to MedlinePlus.
Risks of Rapid Weight Loss
Don't blame your metabolism for all the weight you've gained. Your body typically balances its metabolism to meet your needs and only in rare instances are metabolic conditions the cause of weight gain, according to MayoClinic.com. Cutting too many calories at once may lead your body to respond in a backward fashion, wherein it compensates for what it perceives to be a survival, or starvation, emergency by sending your body into calorie conservation mode, making weight loss very difficult. Also, cutting out too many calories at once may actually lead to water or muscle weight loss, instead of fat loss.
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