To reiterate what many have already said: you can't target fat loss. You can only target with muscle development. Sometimes if your core is weak, strengthening your core can make you look leaner, but every body is different.

What I'd recommend: strengthen your legs.

If you're worried about losing fat in your legs when you lose weight, adding muscle will offset this. And as a bonus, if you're a complete noob at the gym, it's totally possible to get stronger and lose weight at the same time.

Where I would disagree with some of the previous posts is I would not recommend you to run. Or rather, I would recommend you to limit cardio that has high impact on your legs. Running will actually make your leg muscles leaner, which is the opposite effect of what you are trying to achieve.

Besides, cardio is less crucial for weight loss, and there are low impact forms of cardio like elliptical and cycling that will elevate your heart rate, but not lean out your leg muscles.

Nutrition is how you lose weight. If you consume fewer calories than your body burns, you will lose weight.

I won't go into the science, but your body has an "ideal" weight (which is different for everyone) that it will try to go back to, and your body will naturally try to preserve fat as much as possible. Meaning if you eat less, your body will become more efficient and burn fewer calories.

The best way to lose weight is to track your calories over time, and just keep lowering your calories by 100 until you start to see weight loss, and only lower it further when you start to plateau. Keep a journal of how much you think you ate, and always subtract calories burned from exercise (so if you workout, you eat more). A good rule of thumb for someone your size is around 1 pound of weight loss per week. Any more than that would likely be unhealthy/not possible.

For example, let's say of you eat 2000 calories and your weight stays the same for two weeks. Lower your calories to 1900. If you only lost 1 pound over two weeks, try lowering your calories by another 100 to 1800. If you do cardio for an hour, and you burn 900 calories, eat 2700 calories that day. Burned calories are not free! You'll just starve yourself and it will make you more likely to cheat and fall off the wagon.

There's a lot to track, and weight loss happens slowly. This is why having professional assistance can be critical. It's also totally possible to be discouraged by misleading measurements. For example, you eat one salty meal and suddenly your body is holding 3 extra pounds of water weight the next morning. Measure your weight everyday to eliminate the error from natural fluctuations

Body development is a slow process, and it's entirely possible that your body is not physically able to attain the shape you want. Always mitigate your expectations and focus on short-term goals: I want to lose 4 pounds by the end of the month or I want to squat 135 lbs by the summer.

Good luck!

EDIT: I forgot to mention, always weigh yourself at the same time everyday, wearing the same clothes or naked.  Please keep in mind your body naturally fluctuates in weight.  A difference in 3-5 pounds with no change in body composition is normal.  Heavier people can have even wider swings.  Just because you are 5 pounds lighter after a week of dieting does not mean you lost 5 pounds of fat.  It's just water loss and less food in your digestive tract.  Weight loss takes time. Lots of it.

Nope. Not eating for 2 weeks isn't a good way to lose fat. Sure you can lose weight, a lot of it will be just water and another big portion will be muscle and glycogen.

He would suffer for 2 weeks, not even counting for the unhealthy portion, but would lose small quantity of fat itself. And that would fast go back once he started eating normally.

Any efficient weight loss program demands a change of habits for the rest of life, just look that almost all extreme diets fat people do results in a gain of weight bigger than the loss they had.

If you don't eat for two weeks, you will lose a lot more than water.  Your body needs fuel to keep going, and it can't use water as fuel.  

Part of it will be muscle and part fat, but why would it only be a small quantity of fat?  I'm legitimately asking cause I've heard this, and never understood it.  Fat is essentially what your body is saving for a rainy day.  So, why would your body burn muscle instead of fat when that rainy day comes?

Because your body needs fat more than it need muscle, first because fat is used to produce a lot of hormones and second because fat is the last thing your body wants to use since it is the last reserve to keep you alive (besides cushioning your inners and keep your heat).

So for you to have a good loss of fat you need to exercise to keep muscle (basically you need to force your body to keep the muscle) and accept a steady but slow loss, 2 weeks of starvation won't do that.

Also muscle burn calories while fat doesn't need calories to keep itself, so body burn muscle so it gains energy from muscle plus will help you need less energy. Besides other mechanism to reduce your metabolism when you reduce your intake (thus why a good program will have you slowly but progressively cutting calories and adding exercise so your body doesn't have a bid impact and adapt fast).

But... if the fat is the last reserve to keep you alive, isn't that the time, when you're not eating food, that it's there for?  It just doesn't make sense to me.  Maybe I just need to study it a bit more.

If you don't eat for two weeks, you will lose a lot more than water.  Your body needs fuel to keep going, and it can't use water as fuel.  

Part of it will be muscle and part fat, but why would it only be a small quantity of fat?  I'm legitimately asking cause I've heard this, and never understood it.  Fat is essentially what your body is saving for a rainy day.  So, why would your body burn muscle instead of fat when that rainy day comes?

Because fat can only be broken down and turned into energy to feed the muscles and organs at a certain speed differentiating from person to person ,the more calorie deficit a day the more muscle you might break down if the body is not able to turn nutrients in the stomach or fat into energy and transport that fast enough.

Omega fatty acids help greatly with breaking down fat storage and transporting them and it is adviced to take in enough of it when going on a semi heavy or heavy diet.

Also heavy cardio can be counterproductive cause the body will tend to use the fast energy reserves.