Kids Health Notes

Exclusive Interview: Jared Fogle of Subway

by Grace on May 19th, 2008

I am totally psyched with this interview, and I think you will be, too!

You all know JARED FOGLE, the Subway restaurant guy who lost 295 lbs. in one year by eating Subway sandwiches!

In 1998, he was 425 lbs. at his heaviest (see size-60 pants!), but within a year, he went down to 190 lbs with this Subway meal plan: a lunch that included a six-inch turkey sub (no oil, mayo or cheese), a bag of Baked Lays® potato chips and a diet soft drink, and for dinner, a 12-inch veggie sub.

The year 2008 marks Jared’s 10 successful years of keeping the weight off. I talked to Jared over the phone and was inspired by his story and honesty.

Kids Health Notes:  Hi Jared, thanks for letting me talk to you. So according to your bio, you were 425 lbs. in college. Have you always had weight problems all your life?

Jared Fogle: Yes. Well, I guess not my entire life but from age 7 or 8 onward, I was heavy. It started out just a little bit and then it became a lot more and then a lot more and before I knew it, exponentially it was increasing. I would say probably I was obese by 6^th grade. By the time I entered high school I would have definitely been considered morbidly obese by that point.

Kids Health: What unhealthy habits were you into that made you obese at such a young age?

Jared: I think for me it was combination of several things. When I turned 8 years old, for my birthday I received my very own Nintendo video game system and just quickly became almost addicted to it, I guess if you want to call it that. And just unfortunately all the sports I used to play got replaced by me just wanting to watch TV all day long and play video games all day long. I just did not want to change and unfortunately my weight went up and up. I wanted to move even less and less because it became more and more difficult to move.

Coupled with that my eating habits started to change as well by late in elementary school to the point where I was eating a lot more junk food and starting to even sneak fast food from my parents. And I would say I think it became a vicious cycle where the more I ate, the less I wanted to move because it was harder to move. The less I would move the more bored I became, and the more bored I became the more I wanted to eat.

Kids Health: Are you the only one in the family having this weight problem?

Jared: Yes I really was. Yeah. That is the sad part. My dad is actually a family physician, so I grew up fairly educated on what I should and should not be eating and I just never unfortunately took his advice to heart.

Kids Health: They must be very happy to see that you are now healthy.

Jared: They are! My dad and mom were up literally up at night worried sick about me. Especially through high school into college when I was at my heaviest. He saw it first hand in his other patients, he knew what I was up against and I think it really scared him.

Kids Health: But in college you did try to lose weight, right? What other things were you doing before Subway?

Jared: Yup. Oh, I tried everything. I tried making my own food at home but I was not much of a cook so that was sort of difficult. Again, to be honest that was a lot of work and when you are over 400 pounds like I was, that can sort of be daunting even after you cook a meal. So, that did not really work. I tried the liquid shakes where you drink a liquid shake for breakfast and one for lunch and then you try to eat a normal dinner but I was so starving by the time dinner would come around that I would just pig out. I even tried microwaving low fat dinner entrees out of the freezer but I thought they tasted so bad I could not stand them and just fell off the wagon each time I tried.

Kids Health: Were you doing any physical activity? Like were you in sports?

Jared: No, not at that point. By the time I was in 7th grade or so I stopped exercise pretty much completely. I mean I definitely dropped out of all the sports I used to play. Every year that went by it seemed like I exercised less and less.

Kids Health: And when you were in college, did you have other health problems?

Jared: Yes. I developed sleep apnea in a major way where of course I had so much fat around my neck that when I would sleep at night the fat would literally crush my wind pipe and I would have trouble breathing through out the night and I would wake gasping for a deep breath.

Kids Health: Did you go to a doctor? Well you probably saw your dad…

Jared: You know I did not, actually because I refused to. I hated the conflict it would cause because he would always get on me about wanting me to lose weight and I did not want to deal with it. So, to be honest …I know this sounds really scary…I did not go to a doctor all of high school and most college until I started to lose the weight because I just refused to hear what they had to say.

Kids Health: Wow, that is scary. Now, when exactly did you start the subway diet?

Jared: I started it in March of 98. I was technically a junior although I took 5 years to graduate so it was my 3^rd year that I lost the weight.

Kids Health: What was the hardest thing to do when you started on subway?

Jared: It was really tough at first. I think the hardest thing was just getting used to eating a lot less calories and a lot less grams of fat. You know I was used to eating so much before this. It was just really, really tough especially those first couple weeks for my body to adjust to eating a lot less and to deal with it.

Kids Health: But, if you were to eat a foot long Subway, there’s probably not a lot of calories in it but it’s still a heavy meal.

Jared: Not really…it is all relative. I think it is all in comparison to what you are used to eating. You know I was used to eating 5 or 6 plates at the Chinese buffet. I was eating over 10,000 calories a day at my heaviest. So to go from eating 10,000 plus calories a day to eating 1,500 calories a day, this is the lowest taking in approximately with subway sandwiches and the baked chips. It was a pretty good shock to my system initially but I went into it knowing that it is going to take sacrifice, it is going to take commitment, it is going to take being focused and I am going to have to deal with it.

Kids Health: So in college, you had gradually gotten to that point where you wanted to change and Subway was there.

Jared: Yes. I always say the stars had sort of aligned for me and I think it was a combination of really, really wanting it more then anything but also finding the right mechanism for me to do it and the mechanism for me was Subway sandwiches. It was something I really believed in, it was something I enjoyed eating anyway. I felt I had control. I mean, there are a lot of things that played into it that allowed me to have success I think.

Kids Health: When did you start getting active again?

Jared: Well I started walking, once I lost the first 100 pounds. I mean I was so heavy, you have to realize that just walking next door to Subway was an effort at first let alone trying to actually do some real exercise programs. But once I got those first 100 pounds off or so my body was not aching as much anymore. I was not as winded anymore and I think I could finally start to just do basic walking. You know about a half hour a day 45 minutes a day and that definitely helped.

Kids Health: And when did you loose the first 100 pounds?

Jared: It took me just under about 3 months to loose the first 94 pounds.

(Amazing, isn’t it! Tomorrow, I’ll share part 2 of my interview and you’ll see how Jared is doing these 10 years. Plus he’ll also talk about what he is up to these days.)

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