The Thin Man: Jared Fogle's Subway diet reduces his weight and expands his exposure

Jared Fogle took stock of his life and found it lacking:

His self-esteem was buried under more than 200 pounds of unhealthy weight on his 6-foot-2 inch frame, fitting into movie seats and desk chairs was difficult, and his social life was severely lacking.

At age 20 and 425 pounds, the Indiana University student realized that his life could take two paths -- lumbering and lost, or lithe and lean.

Ironically, he came to this conclusion while standing in a Subway sandwich shop around the corner from his Bloomington, Ind., apartment. Fogle decided to eat nothing but Subway's low-fat sandwiches until he was a thin man.

That was in March 1998. By February of '99 he had eaten his way to 190 pounds. He now has a girlfriend, a business management degree and a commercial for the national Subway chain showing him at his heaviest and sporting a beard, and his now svelte, clean-shaven, sprightly 22-year-old self.

"It's like night and day now," he said. "My confidence has changed and that's the biggest thing. I know now that I've done this, I can do anything if I just put my mind to it."

And Subway couldn't be happier. Donna Curry, development agent for local Subway stores and owner of several Las Vegas Subway stores, said that sales are up since the Fogle commercial began airing Jan. 3.

After Fogle appeared on "Oprah" in February, "we noticed a dramatic amount of people who came in and wanted the same sandwich he had," Curry said. "A lot of people (in Las Vegas) have said they lost weight following the diet."

Fogle's solution was simple. His only non-Subway meal was breakfast, usually juice or coffee. Lunch consisted of one six-inch turkey sub with all the veggies but no cheese, mayonnaise or oil, and a bag of low-fat potato chips. Dinner was doubled to a foot-long veggie sandwich and diet soda.

Snacks were banned, but liquids were cool: He had 12 varieties of diet drinks -- some with caffeine, some without -- constantly stocked in his small apartment.

"As far as food goes that's all I ate," Fogle said. "I didn't buy groceries for a year."

His focus didn't waiver. At first neither did the weight.

"I think a lot of it was a mental game, and once I saw the results it became much more satisfying to me," he said. "I was able to put up with it more because I knew I was doing something good for myself."

Carolyn Leontos, a nutrition specialist and registered dietician with the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, said that while Fogle's diet was mostly nutritious, variety, moderation and balance are the keys to a healthy diet.

"It worked for him and I don't want to knock him, but as far as making a recommendation, I'd like to see people incorporate variety," she said.

Whole grains, dairy, iron and folic acid are a few things Fogle's diet was lacking, Leontos said. "Calorically, he obviously did fine and I'd like to congratulate him on his weight loss," she said. "But he could have used some other daily nutrients."

Dieters who make healthy choices 80 percent of the time and indulge in sweets and fatty foods only 20 percent of the time have a better chance of losing weight and keeping it off while still getting all the nutrients they need.

Fogle is quick to say that the diet was simply his own creation and the Subway notoriety a fluke, but the diet felt like a solid solution to him.

In other words, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. "If it works, it works. If it doesn't, there's nothing lost," he said.

But when the scale numbers started rolling backward, Fogle was hooked. He had lost 100 pounds within a few months, whittling down to a size he hadn't seen since high school.

He didn't exercise much -- Fogle simply walked to and from school and any errands he had to do were accomplished via foot power as well.

"At that point it was hard enough to move, let alone exercise," he said.

Since the dramatic decrease it's difficult for Fogle to recall the days when going to the movies or class was a nagging fear because he wasn't sure if he'd find a seat that would hold his size.

"I lived day to day. I didn't have a future and I wasn't confident that I was going to have a future," he said. "I had zero confidence."

On average, Fogle spent $9 a day on food, which comes to $63 a week or $270 a month. Compared with the life he had as an unhealthy, overweight and under-confident young man, Fogle said his cost was chump change.

"When you consider the cost of losing the weight and getting your life back, to me it was worth it," he said. "I'd pay the price -- double, triple, quadruple -- if I got the same results."

Subway got wind of the shrinking student when Fogle appeared in Men's Health Journal magazine, which had learned about him through a university paper. "I couldn't believe it was happening, that they wanted to know how I did this," he said.

Still, despite the newfound attention, Fogle said that the greatest reward to him in telling the world about his weight loss and exposing his not-so-attractive "before" pictures is the feedback he gets from others who struggle with their weight.

"I've gotten e-mails and letters from people around the country who have heard my story and that I've given them some hope to get their life back," he said. "It's great to see that I've had some positive impact on them to do that. I could never imagine that I could have done that for anybody."

He looks at his new fame as a once-in-a-lifetime chance but, he said, it's not forever. He plans to fade gracefully into obscurity when the Subway advertisements end later this year.

"I didn't have a life," Fogle said. "I lived but I really didn't live -- and now I have a future. We'll see where it goes from here."

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