Any reduction in calories will result in weight loss. However for noticeable weight loss you will need to lose at a minimum several thousand. This is because a pound of body fat contains around 3,500 calories. So if you want to lose 10 pounds, that’s 35,000 calories.
This may seem like a huge amount, but if you look at it on a weekly basis it really is not so bad. Let’s say you want to lose 10 pounds and you have 10 weeks to do it, or 1 pound per week. This means that you need to lose 3,500 calories over the week, or 500 calories per day.
To lose 500 calories per day you need to create a calorie deficiency. This occurs when the number of calories you take in equals less than the amount of calories you burn off. There are two ways this can be done. You could either eat less calories, or you could burn off more calories over the day. The best option would be to use a combination, such as eating 250 less calories and doing 250 calories worth of exercise each day.