Q: hey mike, I'm 17 years of age 6 ft tall and 165 lbs. Most of body is in decent shape except for my stomach and my chest. I eat as healthy as I can and work out with 20 lb hand weights (trying to invest in a bench and more weight) My only goal is to loose my chest and stomach. I heard stress can cause excess body fat (witch I deal with to much on a daily biasses I've been walking a few hours a day recently. My question is what kind of exercise should I do to loose my chest? and what kind of food should I be eating daily to speed up the process? PS: my main goal is to loose chest fat but also I want to tone it up as well, so what are the different foods I should be eating while I rotate every few days from fat loose to muscle gain? I'd greatly appreciate it if you could unwires all of this, i truly need it

A: Sure, I can help. First off, at your height and weight you must already be fairly lean and especially since you're still young dieting for weight loss is not a good option. What you're experiencing, the extra fat on stomach and chest, is extremely common. Unfortunately there's not an easy solution to it for people who are already fairly lean, such as yourself. There are some lucky guys who would naturally have a six-pack or near six-pack at your age, height, and weight. But you, and the majority of other guys, have to work pretty hard for it. So here're things you need to do...

Get better/more equipment or, ideally, join a gym. In order to maximize fat burning you want to work out as many of your muscles as possible. Doing bench presses will not burn any more chest fat than doing pullups or squats -- you have to exercise your whole body to lose those last bits of extra fat. With home equipment only you'll find it tough to properly stress (meaning using weights that cause muscular failure in 6-12 reps) your legs and lower back (with squat, lunge, and deadlift exercises primarily) which comprise about 50% of your muscle mass. That's why gym is preferable. If you can't join the gym, you can still make progress at home -- just make sure you have a lot of dumbbells, including some truly heavy ones for squats, lunges, deadlifts (all three for legs and lower back), and rows (for the upper back). By the way, if you're not sure what the different exercises are, check out this page.

Second, and possibly more important, thing is the diet. You need to clean it up as much as possible and eat lots of whole, healthy foods such as lean meats and fish, tons of vegetables (green leafy stuff, not corn and potatoes), fruits, whole grains (old-fashioned oatmeal or brown rice, not sugary breakfast cereals or white bread/rice/pasta), and olive oil and nuts (but not oil-roasted ones). Don't eat fried stuff, don't eat sweetened stuff (artificially or otherwise), don't eat processed foods (that have a ton of ingredients on the nutrition facts label).

How much to eat? Here you have a choice that's not altogether simple. You can either eat just enough to maintain your present weight OR you can try to gain some weight in the form of muscle. The former is self-explanatory. You maintain the same weight, but through cleaner diet and proper training you will slowly make progress towards losing the extra fat. The latter is trickier. Gaining weight will build up your muscle mass, increase your metabolism and will make it easier to lose fat in the long run. It will however almost certainly gain you some temporary new fat alongside new muscle. The amount of new fat versus new muscle will depend on how good your diet is, whether you're training at high intensity, and most importantly how quickly you are gaining weight. If you gain no faster than 2 pounds per month you should see almost no new fat gains and a lot of new muscle. The bad news is thta maintaining the accurate and strict diet for such precise slow weight gain is not easy. The good news is that you're at the best possible age when building muscle comes relatively easily and your body is most forgiving about extra weight gains! I definitely recommend this second approach, but the choice is yours.

If you do choose to bulk up first, I would recommend doing so for around 6 months and getting to around 180 pounds. Then with all the new muscle and metabolism revving very high, you'd change your diet for the fat-burning mode and (again slowly, no faster than 1 pound per week) get back down to 165-170 pounds. Your training need not change, only your diet controls going from muscle-building mode to fat-burning mode. Once you've done all that in 8-9 months, you should weigh about the same as you do now, but have significantly more muscle and less fat. It'll also be about the right time for the next summer season.

For a suggested diet and workout program please fill out the Fitness Guide. Specify 'Gain Muscle' as your goal. Adjust portion sizes up or down depending on how much you need to stay at your present weight or to gain weight slowly (if you decide to proceed with the 'bulk first/cut fat later' approach which I recommend).

Finally you heard right that stress can cause fat gains. It won't be huge, but at the point where you are every little bit counts. There's no one universal advice on how to avoid or deal with stress, but you should try to find ways to do so. Also try to get as much sleep as possible, 8 hours/day ideally.

That's about it. Try to digest all the info I gave you, join the gym if you can or at least get heavier dumbbells, fill out the Fitness Guide and consult the Exercises page if you don't understand some exercises. Check out other articles under the Fitness Guide too. Remember to always gain or lose weight as slowly as possible to burn more fat and preserve/build more muscle. Good luck!