13 Things You Never Knew About Your Weight

Our team pored over the latest studies, interviewed the top clinicians in obesity science, and listened to the real-life experiences of men and women struggling to maintain their weight. Here, the latest (and often unexpected) thinking behind size and thighs, fatness and fitness...

1. It Really Is Genetic
When scientists first discovered it in certain chubby mice, they called it simply the fatso gene. Years later, when they scoured the human genome for markers that increased vulnerability to type 2 diabetes, the fatso gene (now more politely called FTO) showed up there too. Turns out, people with two copies of the gene were 40 percent more likely to have diabetes and 60 percent more likely to be obese than those without it. Those with only one copy of the gene weighed more too.

Scientists now suspect that there are lots of fat genes.