Q: My sister & I both gain weight in our middle. I am about an average physique but my sister has always been teased for being VERY skinny, though around her middle she has a little pot belly & love handles. Is she supposed to lose even more weight just to lose the fat around that area? Looking at how skinny the rest of her body is, losing more weight just seems insane to me.

A: Where our bodies gain and lose fat is not in our conscious control, unfortunately. Usually the gains and losses mirror each other, so if your sister only gains fat around the middle, then she'd only lose it there as well. When I say 'lose fat overall', I just mean forget the idea of targeting fat loss in any one area -- let your body decide where to lose fat because that's what's going to happen anyway. So hopefully for your sister it'd mean that she'd lose fat primarily around her belly. BUT it is not at all guaranteed. Most women, even those who are lean all over, still have a small layer of fat on their bellies that they just cannot naturally lose. It's the same story for many guys, though younger guys can usually get to the six-pack stage if they absolutely put their minds to it.

So I guess my advice to your sister, if she wanted to try and lose that fat, would be to follow all the things I say on this site and see what happens. She should be able to lose some fat off her belly if she has a good bit of it, but there is no guarantee that every last bit will ever be gone so that she can see her 'six-pack'. If she is noticing that she is doing all the right things, losing weight slowly, but her belly fat remains the same, that is a good indicator that she's reached about as far as she can. At that point it would be wise to eat more so the weight loss stops and just continue exercising. In this case she may be able to make more progress with time, but we would be talking months and years of very slow gradual changes, not a relatively rapid cut when she'd lose a pound a week of weight.