If you Are one of those people who believe that there is no excuse for obesity and that a severely overweigh individual is simply someone who eats too much and does not get sufficient exercise, then think again. While it is undoubtedly true that overeating combined with an inactive lifestyle can result in obesity, this is certainly not the only cause of obesity.

Although obesity is not terribly well understood at the moment, there is believed to be a genetic factor that can pre-dispose some individuals to obesity. For example, some forms of the genes responsible for controlling such things as appetite and metabolism are believed to contribute to obesity when they are combined with certain environmental conditions.

Additionally, there are several genetic disorders which can result in obesity. For example, Prader-Willi syndrome which is named after Andrea Prader and Heinrich Willi and was described initially in 1956, is a genetic disorder in which, amongst other things, sufferers display a voracious appetite and amass excess fat, particularly within the central area of the body.

Illness can also lead to a gain in weight and obesity. Possibly the best know, but not the only, illness which frequently leads to obesity is hypothyroidism, in which the thyroid gland secretes too little thyroid hormone. Although the disorder itself lead to only mild weight gain, when combined with suitable environmental conditions, this can easily develop in a substantial rise in weight.

Medication can also result in an increase in weight. The list of medicines that can result in weight gain is very long but one class of drugs which is causing concern and has attracted the attention of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a class of atypical antipsychotics that can have a clear affect on an individual's metabolism.

There are also several specific eating disorders that will result in obesity, like binge eating disorder. Binge eating disorder is a psychiatric disorder (and an element of the condition of bulimia nervosa) in which, as its name indicates, people are unable to control their eating and frequently intersperse binge eating into an otherwise normal pattern of eating.

Some diets can also lead to obesity without the person realizing that it is their diet which is the cause of the problem. In other words this is not a case of simply eating too much, but rather one of eating the wrong type of food. In some individuals for example certain foods will produce an abnormally high level of blood sugar for a time immediately after eating.

Dieting can also cause obesity. It is a fact that most diets are a failure and we are witnessing a growing number of people who spend a significant proportion of their lives moving from one diet to the next in the hope of losing weight. What actually occurs here is that they generally lose weight while they are on a diet but then put it back on again, normally with a bit extra, every time they come off a diet. As they come on and off a variety of diets their weight cycles up and down, however the underlying trend is for their weight to increase over time, eventually leading to their becoming obese.

These are merely some of the causes of obesity, in addition to simple overeating and a lack of exercise, and a number of these causes are either not within the control of the individuals concerned or their ability to take control of the situation is very limited.

So, the next time you see an obese individual you may be right in assuming that they have caused their own problem, but you might equally be incorrect in jumping to this conclusion. GastricBypassFacts.info is a growing resource center providing a wealth of obesity information on topics including morbid obesity and also provides a growing number of obesity articles