How many calories do I need to lose weight?

 Weight loss is simple. I do not mean in this in the sense of the amount of work that goes into it (though this could be made a whole lot easier than you are doing it right now) but in the sense of the logic behind it. The logic is: Imput must be less than output or output must be greater than input. This simply means that the energy you expend or burn must be greater than your calorie intake.
 The basic body functioning process which is referred to as metabolism requires some energy to carry this out. Functions and activities like breathing, walking, lifting, chewing and many other functional activities need energy to take place. Like you might as well know this is derived majorly and basically from food. On a daily basis an average female burns 1350-1900 calories. This simply means that eating this amount of calories daily helps maintain your weight. 
Now to lose weight you must be able to able to intake or consume less than that. The rule of the thumb however is that to keep the body metabolic function running optimally, you must eat at 1200 calories per day. This says then that you can only cut your calories bit by bit over some period of time to have a healthy and effective weight loss. You should not drastically cut your calorie intake to lower than 1200
In view of this what is recommended is that you cut your calorie consumption by 300-500 cal per day and withing 7-12days you will have lost about 3500 calories which is equivalent to a  about one pound weight. 
A calorie calculator must be handy to accurately monitor the calorie intake. 

Different types of food have different calories stored in them. A good example is pure natural honey and sugar
A tablespoon of sugar has about 2 times more calories than a table spoon of honey
Non-starchy vegetables are known to have the very little amount of calories this is why vegetable diet is always recommended. It feels your stomach yet does not accumulate calories in your bodyExample of these non starch vegetables are: collard green, lettuce, carrots, beets, cabbage.Exercise are ways of speeding up the amount of calories you burn. so that if you intake more than 1900  you should naturally and logically gain weight but you can burn it away through exercise in combination with a reduced a calorie intake then results are faster. This is why I say losing weight without pills within a short period of time is a synergistic combination of natural weight loss methods. I therefore recommend STRIP THAT FAT which is a complete guide on everything natural weight loss. For a review of this book Click here