Q: Hi Mike, I'm 18 years old and in my senior year of high school. Im around 233 pounds right now, but since january of 2010 i have been losing weight on my own diet and excercise program and have lost 85 pounds. The bulk of this weight loss coming between january and september. I roamed off of my diet and gained around 20 pounds back between november and january. But recently ive been back in my weight loss mentality and Ive been curious as to how to make this final push of getting this, mainly belly fat, off. This is how i stumbled upon your page and was very interested, your website is very helpful and you seem very knowledgable. I suppose my question would be if you have any advice further from your fitness guide and diet guide, because i seem to be intimidated of going on a 1500 or less calorie diet because of my age and the fact that I am quite active. I lift 4-5 times a week as well as jogging, and I play basketball or softball usually twice a week. I hope to hear back from you and thanks again.

A: First off, congratulations and great job on losing those first 85 pounds! I completely agree with you that a very low-calories diet (1500 calories or less) is NOT appropriate for your situation. When you were very obese it was relatively easy to "convince" your body to lose the extra fat. However as you get in better and better shape this will no longer be the case. Losing the last 20-40 pounds of fat will be harder than losing the first 80 in many ways because now your body will not be so eager to get rid of them. Instead your body will react to a very low calorie diet by literally burning your muscle mass, instead of fat, for energy. This would be bad news because not only would you not lose the extra fat, but also lose the valuable muscle mass. The muscle mass is valuable because your muscles are your best natural fat-burner by far. If you lose your muscle mass you will lose your ability to burn fat and keep it off.

So your goal should be providing your body with enough energy and exercise stimulus to hang on to the existing muscle but still slowly lose fat over time. Since your body is still growing and since you are physically active that would mean a diet of at least 2000 calories, with about a third of calories coming from protein, third from carbs, and third from fat. On such a diet you should aim for weight loss rate slower than when you were losing 85 pounds last year. One pound per week would be a good pace, and slower might be even better.

Your diet should look roughly similar to http://www.mikesfitness.com/content/fat-loss-diet-1900-calories or http://www.mikesfitness.com/content/fat-loss-diet-2400-calories -- somewhere in 2000 to 2500 calories daily. It's great that you are physically active already -- keep it going. Since most of your current physical activity is more cardio than resistance training you may want to consider taking up http://www.mikesfitness.com/content/weight-training as well -- this will greatly help you in both hanging on to your existing muscle mass and in burning fat.

So, to summarize, eat a balanced diet with at least 2000 calories daily, aim for slower weight loss than before (1 pound per week or slower), stay active, and take up weight training if possible. Best of luck!