Read Brett Sanders' advice on how to change your body shape

Last month you asked personal trainer Brett Sanders, our resident Ask the Expert, your burning questions on health, fitness and more.

In this first instalment, he tells you how you can take control of your body shape.

You asked: How do I get rid of my stomach? I have been going to the gym for the past 3 years.

Brett answered: The first thing I need to say is, "Well done" on going to the gym for the past 3 years. You have shown that you can dedicate yourself to a positive lifestyle change. Secondly, the gym is only one piece of the puzzle. In your life, there are four factors that you could potentially change, or modify, that will help you to get rid of your stomach. It is an excess of stress, in all its forms, that gives people unwanted symptoms - whether injury, illness, or even extra body fat. By reducing the stressful load that is currently on the body you can eliminate your symptoms.

The four lifestyle factors are your nutritional habits, your exercise programme, your daily rhythms, and your mental/emotional stresses. The exercise programme is probably the least important of all of these - consider that you eat 3-5 times per day, your rhythms primarily work with the 24 hour circadian rhythm, you have approximately 70,000 thoughts each day - but you only exercise for maybe 30 minutes a day, up to 2 or 3 hours each week. So, while it is very important to move correctly and in the right quantities, it is not as important as the other factors.

Simple things you can do to reduce your physiological load are to get to bed by 10pm and get at least 8 hours sleep, learn to breathe with your diaphragm, and manage your stress levels and "busyness" throughout the day so that you can maintain this breathing pattern - any time you breathe with your chest will be seen as a stress response by the body!

Lastly, changing your diet for the better will be one of the most beneficial things you could ever do to flatten your stomach. While this is a huge topic on its own, three things you can do today to make the most of how you nourish your body are: eating organically where possible, drinking your bodyweight in kilograms multiplied by 0.033 in litres of clean water a day, and chewing every mouthful of food until it is liquid before you swallow it.

You asked: I am over weight and losing weight, but I am scared that I will get loads of loose skin. How can I prevent this?

Brett answered: Congratulations on losing weight so far. Many people are scared of the same problem as you, but do not worry, it is preventable. The human skin is an adaptable organ that will stretch and snap back into shape at varying rates dependant on the time it takes to stretch, and the methods of stretching versus "snapping back" - i.e. how you lose the weight. The best example of this is when a woman is pregnant, her skin can go back to its pre-pregnancy shape. Now, granted, it's not always the case for many mothers, but I think this comes down to the cause of the loose skin in the first place.

In my experience, loose skin is due to excess body fat tissue around the area of loose skin - not necessarily at the exact site of the loose skin but in the same region which will give a looser or "flabbier" appearance.

The causes of this excess body fat can be vast, but the number one contributor is usually Crash / Yo-Yo Dieting. Ensure that you are eating healthily and exercising. Both of these two basic components to a balanced lifestyle will help the body to detoxify, which is what body-fat is, an accumulation of toxins.