Q: My butt is pretty small for a female, because I gain most of my weight in my stomach. I am trying to lose about 10 lbs but I don't want my butt to get any smaller. Is there a way to maintain it's size by replacing the fat with muscle, or better yet to maybe even build it a little bigger without getting big muscles all over?

A: You do not have any control over where your body prefers to store and to lose fat, so you can't target your butt for fat loss or fat retention. You can however definitely target your butt and your lower body in general for muscle gain! Probably the best single exercise for the butt is in-place and/or walking lunges (walking lunges is walking forward taking very big exaggerated steps with the forward leg bent 90 degrees or more at the knee and the trailing leg has the knee touching the floor at its lowest point). The squat will also work your butt a lot. You can find information about those exercises on my Essential Exercises page. Finally, if you have access to the gym, you will probably find some sort of a machine which essentially perform the motion of pulling/pushing one leg straight back at a time -- that works your butt as well. You can duplicate the effect of that exercise at home by kneeling down on the floor with your lower legs and your hands on the floor. Then straightening one leg out and lifting it up before lowering it. Alternate legs to work both sides.

Going back to fat loss however, you can only lose fat over all and let your body decide where exactly it wants to lose it. My fat loss article is here. If you follow an aggressive lower body workout program that includes exercises I described above, you should be able to offset whatever little fat loss happens at your butt with building some new muscle there and come out better overall. Good luck!