I realize some people might find this question a little pathetic, but hopefully some people can give me some good feedback anyway.

Although I am not content with my athletic ability at this point, I am generally happy with how I look. Right now, I am about 18% BF (give or take 1-2 percent---I might not be measuring really accurately). I'm less than an inch under six feet, and I weigh about 190 pounds. I'm thin enough to look thin wearing fairly close fitting clothes---I think most people would consider me reasonably thin, but without the benefit of a shirt to hide my belly, I still see quite a bit more belly fat than I'd like to see. My hope is to bid farewell to a good chunk of it by the end of this year.

That being said, I have a lot of clothes, and I really like the clothes I have and don't want them to stop fitting me. With shirts, that's not a big deal, since shirts don't fit as close anyway. But I don't want my pants and jeans to stop fitting me. How can I lose belly fat without really losing inches from my waist and thereby making my pants too loose?

Maybe this won't be too much of a problem. It seems that ever since I went from being super thin at the beginning of college to not-very-thin (although not very fat either) a few years ago, I went from a 32 waist to a 34 waist. Pretty much every pair of pants I have now is a 34 waist. Recently though, I've bought a few pairs of 33 waist jeans, given that I've already lost some fat. I seem to now be a 33 waist although the 34 waist pants still fit fine. Because I was a 32 inch waist when I was really thin, I don't imagine I'd drop below a 32 inch waist no matter how much fat I lose. It seems all the fat I gain or lose happens above the belt line, given that I went from about 150 pounds to 200 pounds over the course of a few years and only gained two inches of waist line. (For what it's worth, that weight gain probably includes a fair amount of muscle in addition to all the belly fat I gained.) There's a lot of fat to grab three inches above my waistline, but very little actually at the waistline.

Anyway, my target is to maintain my current 33 inch waist while losing belly fat. Is that possible? I figure getting myself to 10% BF or so will probably make me a 32 inch waist, and if that happens, my current clothes will be too loose. Is there a way to bulk up my muscles in that area to keep my current waistline as I get rid of fat?

I understand that, and I won't miss fat regardless of which part of my body it's leaving. I'm mostly asking if there's a way to sort of bulk up around the waistline, i.e., replace fat with muscle rather than fat with nothing. Wouldn't building up ab muscles make someone's waistline more than it would be if they were really scrawny, with no muscle and no fat? Weight lifting doesn't make one's arms and legs "thinner" but instead causes them to bulge nicely. Can the same by true with muscles around the waist?

And like I said earlier, my body has always tended to store fat above, not at, the waistline, so it's really only about an inch of waistline I want to keep.

Here is a link that may provide some info for you:

http://training.fitness.com/weight-l...ide-18219.html

Derwyddon is correct, you can't choose where you lose fat, but I'd venture to say that if you have very little fat at your waistline (as you describe), you'll more likely then not lose most your fat above the waistline where you describe having the said 3-inches.

Remember: you can never be too wealthy or too thin!