First off, I just want to say that I'm an Ectomorph, so any weight losing I do will be difficult. But the thing is, is that I am very light for my age. I'm 120 lbs. at 5'11'' and I'm 17 years old. I want to gain weight, but it seems no matter how much I eat, I don't gain any... except around my abdomen. So now I have to worry about losing the weight around my abdomen first and then still worry about gaining weight. I'm at my wit's end!!

Can anyone recommend either a weight loss technique that won't affect all of my body, since I don't need to loss anymore weight as it is on my arms, chest, etc. Or even a diet consumption plan?

Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated!

Are you male or female?

And at your currentl height and weight, you are pretty much underweight.

Have you used a food journal yet to see where your calories are coming from - especially from what food groups.

Target weight loss is pretty much impossible.. you generally lose weight all over, and based on your body, you'll lose it in some places rather than others first.

Sounds like you want to work on a toning regime - rather than weight loss...

And given your age, I have to give my usual speech, asking you to check with your parents, to make sure that you are going about this in a healthy way and that if need be, get checked out by a doctor first.

I would say that, since your final goal is muscle gain, to not worry too much about the fat at this point. If you worry more about the muscles, the fat will solve itself

Now, the community around here isn't as focussed on muscle gain as it is fat loss, but I believe fitness.com hosts another forum for muscle building that you may want to check out. But I'll give advice a shot anyways because I'd hate to see a post wasted

A very important thing for you to look at is WHAT your eating, and HOW you're eating it. The fact that you gained fat when you were trying to gain muscles tells me you may not be well educated on nutrition. I would suggest seeing if your school has any sort of "healthy life" programs that might employ a nutritionist for indepth suggestions, but in general, you DON'T want to be eating items high in fat (especially saturated fat!), and you DO want to be eating items high in protein for muscle building. Eating things that have lean white meat would be best, like the white meat from chicken and turkeys, fish, pork (fat cut off), etc. Nuts are also good since the fat they contain is a "good" fat, but be careful with nuts because they're pretty dense with the calories so its very easy to overeat on them.

Of course, if you're trying to build muscle, you'll want to work them out hard! The general rule I've heard is that lower resistance (weight) and more reps will give more lean muscle, and higher resistance with fewer reps will give more of the bulky muscles - but either will give at least a little of both muscle types (again, check with a pro rather than taking some random chumps word for gospel )

I'd also like to echo Mal's words: please check with parents, doctor, etc before starting anything to rigourous - we'd hate to have your hurt yourself unintentionally have nobody know why!

Wow, thanks for the speedy responses!

I am male, if that helps at all, but after reading these response, I think I'm going to sit down with my parents and consider my options. Obviously, if they know about it, they can be supportive of me too. Also, how underweight am I, and do you know what causes that? Becuase I've recently been eating a lot of meals throughout the day, and it seems that I can't gain weight. In fact, it feels like I'm losing weight, but that's probably just me being paranoid.

Thanks for both of your insightful advice, though, it really shows that you can come to here for support too.