Losing weight requires consuming fewer calories than you burn. To lose 1 lb. of fat, you must eliminate 3500 calories from your total consumption or burn it through extra activity or exercise. If you follow a calorie-restricted diet, you should see weight-loss results within a week. If you maintain your weight or gain weight while following a low-calorie diet, you need to study your consumption, exercise and body type to adjust your routine.
Counting Calories
People often underestimate the number of calories they consume. Make sure you truly follow a low-calorie diet plan by paying attention to serving sizes, portion sizes and total calories. For prepared and packaged foods, check the nutrition label for information about what equates a serving size and how many calories are in a single serving. Then measure or weigh your food to ensure you eat the amount that aligns with your target calorie count. When dining at restaurants or other people's homes, stick to a lower calorie count by filling half your plate with leafy greens, fresh fruit, lightly dressed salad or chopped vegetables.
Adjusting Calorie Counts
It can be challenging to strike the perfect balance of calorie consumption and calorie burning to attain consistent weight loss. In general, a woman of average height can consume around 1500 calories per day to gradually lose weight. A man of average height can eat as many as 1800 calories per day and lose weight. People of smaller frames will need to lower their caloric intake to have similar results. If you gain weight on your diet, try cutting a high-calorie item to see if it makes a difference. You might swap a sweetened beverage for plain water and a snack of chips for a bowl of berries. Use healthy but high-calorie foods -- such as nuts, olive oil, avocado and seeds -- sparingly.
Burning Calories
People who lose weight consistently and then hit a weight-loss plateau may need to try creative measures to lose more weight. In addition to following a low-calorie diet, adopt an aerobic workout that elevates your heart rate for an extended period. The more intense the exercise, the more calories you burn. Burn between 500 and 700 calories doing workouts such as circuit training, calisthenics, dancing to fast music, climbing a stair treadmill, jogging, walking uphill, playing competitive basketball, kickboxing or doing a boot-camp workout.
Raise Your Metabolism
One of the trickier ways to burn more calories is to increase your resting metabolic rate. Certain foods, such as chili peppers and cinnamon, contain ingredients that temporarily increase your calorie-burning capabilities. A longer-term solution concerns changing your body composition. Do muscle-building activities to replace fat mass with leaner, denser muscle mass. In doing so, you will raise your basal metabolism; in other words, your body will burn more calories around the clock as it works harder to support your increased muscle mass. Resistance activities such as pushups, triceps dips, pullups and deep squats build muscle, as does lifting weights or using resistance machines.
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