Ten Years of Jared

It has come to my attention that it’s been 10 years since Jared Fogle lost 245 pounds eating Subway sandwiches. And surprisingly enough, it wasn’t a publicity stunt. He was a regular guy who was tired of being fat. In fact, Subway Corporate originally saw him “as an oddity, not an opportunity.”

Hey, man, congrats! I guess he’s joined me as a “literally a freak of nature.”

I’d like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the things Jared did right, and point out a few things he could have done better. For those of you just joining me, let me briefly present my diet credentials: my personal weight loss story; and some of my evolving ideas about diet and weight management.

Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that someone very special is going to be looking over this post very critically, a doctor who specializes in weight and age management here in Las Vegas.

So what did Jared do right?

He came to his own decision to lose weight. His mom, coach, or girlfriend did not cram down a diet on him. He wasn’t carrying anybody else’s baggage about body image, only his own conviction that something had to change. He, on his own, got tired of the fact that “My shoulders would hurt. My knees would hurt. My wrists would hurt. And that was not even when I was in motion.” There is unfortunately something true to the joke about how many psychiatrists it takes to change a light bulb — only one, but the light bulb has to want to change.

He was an adult when he began to diet. Not to discount the terrible problem we have with childhood obesity in this country, but it sure does seem like the vast majority of the people who say diets don’t work have somewhere in their story a sentence like “I went on my first diet when I was 13.” Or 11. Or 16. Many of these diets were enforced by well meaning parents who were honestly trying to help their kids not be little fatties (see previous point). These people may indeed be right about one thing: diets don’t work for them. On one hand, we could use some research on the long term effects of diet on adolescents. On the other hand, I fear for the kids in the test group.

He limited calories, but to a sustainable level. He went from eating “sometimes, 10,000 calories a day” to eating about 2000 calories a day. I think all of us can live on 2000 calories a day for quite a while, and if we do it sensibly we can do it without feeling hungry all the time. This was not a severe calorie restriction diet of under 1000 calories a day.

It was a diet he could keep doing day after day. He lived practically next door to the Subway. It didn’t involve strange foods that were hard to get or difficult and time consuming to prepare. If he went away, there would still be a Subway nearby. If not, he could figure out how to make a sandwich on his own. And really, if he got tired of the turkey sub, he could have had the ham, or the roast beef, or a salad.

It was a (relatively) balanced diet. There’s plenty of veggies on top of a sandwich from Subway, along with a reasonable portion of bread and enough protein to keep you going. Protein is really important on a diet.

He cut added sugar. He didn’t have the cookie with his sandwich, although he did have the baked potato chips. He stopped putting 10 packets of sugar in his morning coffee. He switched to diet soda. Frankly, just the changes in his beverage habits alone probably took 500 calories off his daily intake! Which would you rather have, 500 calories of soda or 500 calories of sandwich?

Once he was physically able to, he added an exercise component to his diet. Sure, it started with some walking. And then a lot of walking. It would not surprise me for his workout to have evolved a bit over the last 10 years.

He wasn’t obnoxious about it. The story goes that “former dorm mate of Fogle, Ryan Coleman, wrote an article about Fogle’s weight loss story after Coleman ran into Fogle and hardly recognized him because of the lost weight.” He wasn’t beating his chest over being on a diet. Heck, he was embarrassed to be that heavy and once said “I had no intention of anyone ever finding out what I had done.”

He didn’t give up. Sandwiches are not the first thing Jared tried, just the most successful thing. To the best of my knowledge — and I have not read his book — he has never discussed some of the strategies that failed. He does point out that some things work better for different people.

He didn’t go back to the way of eating and living that got him fat in the first place. Make no mistake, Jared doesn’t just eat subway sandwiches anymore. But he’s not eating 10,000 calories a day. He’s happy to be where he is, and happy to be helping other people too. I suspect that he still does watch what he eats and that he exercises. He can certainly afford a personal trainer to help with that now.

Nevertheless, there are some things he could have done better.

He skipped breakfast. Just adding a piece of fruit first thing in the morning would have stimulated his metabolism. Some experts recommend eating 5 healthy but snack-sized meals instead of 3 regular meals for just this reason.

He didn’t have a support group. Most people don’t have the inner strength to go it completely alone the way Jared did. Most of us need somebody rooting for us — or at the very least not actively working against us! Even if it’s just one trusted friend or your spouse or your doctor, somebody to help you and sometimes keep you accountable is a good thing.

Most of us would prefer more variety. Don’t get me wrong, Subway has a lot of different sandwiches, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Jared reached a point where he didn’t particularly ever want to see another sub again.

That’s it.  There have been some advances in weight loss and a bunch of research since Jared lost all that weight, but a lot of what he did is still something doable and worth doing.