This diagram from visualcomplexity.com illustrates the complexity of obesity. Obesity is not simply eating the wrong foods or eating too much and it is not simply fixed by changing diet or taking up exercise. These help, but they are not usually enough. The success rate of diets and exercise are low and there are many factors to why this is so. Obesity is metabolic problem and a psycho-social-economical issue. What our mothers ate when we were in their womb, what we ate as a child alter our metabolism in later life. Our parent attitudes towards food, their income, their social status and cultural background also influence your ideas about food and your eating habits. More recent discoveries of hormones that regulate appetite satiation show how obese and clinically overweight people do not receive the signals in the brain that they are full in the same way slim people do. Overweight people brains do not get the message “you are full”. Antibiotics have also been implicated in causing weight gain obesity. As have sugar free drinks. Clearly obesity is complex and needs us to look many aspects of ourselves, including our personal history, our environment as well as looking deeper into metabolism and hormones , our emotions and our attitudes towards food.