The basics of calorie counting comes down to calories in and calories out. How many calories are you consuming and how many are you burning. In order to achieve consistent, sustainable weight loss, you should aim to introduce a calorie deficit into your diet and exercise regime.

Initially you need to gain some understanding of the number of calories you burn a day. In order to do this, you should take a look at a weight loss calculator that will compute an estimate of this. The first metric these calculators should return is your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This can be interpreted as an estimate of the number of calories you burn with no real activity or digestion occurring. The calculator will only need some basic details about yourself including your age, height, gender and weight. Once you BMR is calculated an estimate of the actual number of calories you burn a day is computed by adjusting your Basal Metabolic Rate by a factor based on your general level of activity.

To gain a stronger understanding of the number of calories you are burning, you can also see the typical number of calories burned during different exercises and activities. This information can be calculated by an exercise calorie calculator and only requires basic inputs such as your gender, weight and the duration of your exercise.

The next step in calorie counting is then to see how many calories you are consuming a day. You can search foods for their calorie contents through the use of an online calorie counter. A good habit to get into here is to maintain a diet journal where you keep notes on the foods you are consuming. This will then let you sum the calories in your diet to get a feel for the total calories you are consuming.

Many sources indicate that creating a calorie deficit of 3500 calories over a period of time will result in about one pound of weight loss. To achieve such a deficit you may need to consume less food or simply replace some of the high calorie foods in your diet with lower calorie alternatives as well as exercising more to burn more calories.

You should aim to maintain a basic calorie deficit rather than introducing too large a calorie deficit until the point a healthy weight is reached. Many people have suggested that lowing your calorie intake too low results in your body adjusting to this by burning less calories, and can thus be counterproductive.

It is important to maintain a well balanced diet with all the necessary minerals and vitamins as you adjust your diet for your weight loss process. You should also involve your doctor in your weight loss process as this will ensure you adopt a healthy approach and have professional advice that may be specific to your own situation.