A diet that works for one person may not work for another. One reason is that people have different caloric needs. In order for a weight-loss diet to be effective, you need to know how many calories you need to maintain your weight. Once you have this information, you can work on reducing that amount, which will get the needle on the scale moving in the right direction.
Calculating Your Daily Requirements
Your gender and overall level of activity affects the amount of calories you need to maintain your weight. The University of Maryland Medical Center provides a rough guide to calculating the calories you need. If you're a woman who is moderately active, multiply your current weight by 12 to get a rough estimate of the calories you need to maintain your weight. If you're inactive, multiply your weight by 10. If you're a man, you need to consume more calories than most women. A moderately active man can multiply his weight by 15 to get the recommended number of calories, while an inactive man can multiply his weight by 13. Eating anything over the amount of calories for your gender and activity level will result in weight gain, while the opposite will lead to weight loss.
Daily Calorie Intake
Once you have calculated the approximate number of calories you need to maintain your weight, subtract several hundred calories from that number. For most people, a deficit of 500 calories per day is a reasonable amount to aim for. Do not cut your calories below 1,200 per day, as low-calorie diets can slow metabolism and cause a host of other health problems. If you eliminate 500 calories from your diet each day, you can expect a weight loss of approximately 1 lb. over the course of a week.
Calories Burned Through Exercise
You can increase the rate at which you lose weight by burning extra calories through exercises. Aim to burn an additional 500 calories a day through activity, especially if you are not already active. Take up golf -- a 180-lb. person will burn over 300 calories by playing for just one hour. You don't have to take up a sport to burn calories, however, as raking your lawn for one hour will achieve the same results.
Warning
Don't go to extremes. If you're an active guy who needs 2,500 calories simply to maintain your weight, cutting 1,000 calories a day from your diet and increasing your activity is likely to leave you feeling lethargic. It is easy to lose motivation to diet when you feel deprived or exhausted. Make changes that you can live with in the long run -- otherwise you will likely regain the weight you lose, leading to a cycle of unhealthy yo-yo dieting.
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