When a person’s obesity is having bad effects on overall health to the point of significantly increasing the risk of one or more obesity-related health conditions or co-morbidities, he/she is said to be morbidly obese.

Morbid obesity is a chronic disease with symptoms that build slowly over an extended period of time. It is defined as being 100 lbs or more over your ideal body weight or having a BMI of 40 or higher.

There are many contributing factors to obesity and these include genetic/hereditary, environmental, metabolic and eating disorders. Weight gain usually results when one of these factors affects us in a negative way.

Our genetic make-up plays a major role in gaining excess weight. It determines our “susceptibility” or “risk” of becoming overweight or obese. Our personalized attitudes also influence our behavior regarding what we eat and how much we engage in physical activities in our daily lives.

Genes also affect how efficiently our body utilizes and burns calories and where our body fat is stored. If you have a high metabolic rate, this means that you burn your calories a lot faster so you are less prone to gaining weight than someone else who has a slow metabolic rate. Even people with the same diet may not show any relation to the body weight of each other while a family whose member’s live apart and do not have the same diet may show a close relation to each other’s body size.

Environmental factors such as fast food diners and the weather can also affect the development of our body weight. For example, people who are always moving or are engaged in physical activities during their daily routine will less likely show signs of obesity than people who sit behind a desk all day.

Eating disorders and other medical conditions also influence our body weight. If you have a medical condition or an eating disorder, it is possible that your condition can be treated with just medication. So it is equally important to consult a doctor to make sure that surgery is the right solution for you.