If you are struggling with weight loss, you should be already aware of this basic truth: weight loss can only happen when a calorie deficit occurs in your body. When you eat foods, you consume calories, and when you work, play sports or exercise, you burn off calories. When the number of calories you burn exceeds the number of calories you consume, a calorie deficit occurs in your body, resulting in weight loss. Note that if you have a high Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) then you would be able to burn fat fast even at rest.

In this connection, let me acquaint you with the term Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR is the rate at which your body burns calories at rest. There are a lot of BMR calculators available online, most of them free, that would tell you your BMR. All you need to do is to input your age, height, gender, and weight in these tools, and you would get back your Basal Metabolic rate.

When losing weight, you should always keep your BMR in mind, for it would give you a fair idea of how many calories you need to burn in order to create the necessary calorie deficit, and keep in mind that weight loss would not happen until this calorie deficit is created.

With that said, here are two tips for successful weight loss:

1. While you should definitely cut down on your daily calorie intake, you must provide your body with the minimum amount of calorie it needs to perform its day-to-day operations. If your body doesn't get the required amount of calories, it would go into the 'starvation mode'.

While in starvation mode, your body would start storing food in the form of fat deposits instead of burning them for energy production. This is not a good thing, as you would gain even more weight in the process. To be on the safe side, you should consume a minimum of:

a) 1,800 calories, if you are a man

b) 1,200 calories, if you are a woman

DO NOT cut your calorie intake level beyond the above limits.

2. Do not try to lose weight too fast by starving. Lots of people think that starving would result in a huge calorie deficit and the body would be forced to burn fat in order to make up for the deficit. Actually, the opposite happens.

To be on the safe side, you should not create a calorie deficit of less than 500 calories and more than 1,000 calories. If you follow this rule, you would be losing weight at the rate of 1-2 pounds per week. This is not only normal and healthy, but also permanent weight loss.