Even if you don’t know Jared Fogle by name, you’ve probably heard about his unlikely journey to fame. He’s a 6-foot-2-inch guy who credits a fast-food chain with helping him lose more than 245 pounds.
Jared offers a living, breathing testimony to how motivation and a lasting commitment to exercise and healthful eating can make the difference in not only losing weight, but also keeping it off.
“It’s probably the hardest thing I’ll ever do in my life,” Jared says of his transformation from morbidly obese to his current 190 or so pounds. “But it can be done.
You have to want it badly enough. You can’t depend on your friends or your doctor wanting it for you. It has to come from within you. And you have to be ready to do it.”
Long Road to Weight Loss
Jared lived with the weight problem for many years before he felt ready to do something about it. As a child who watched too much TV and stoked a passion for junk food, Jared was overweight by the time he reached third grade.
As he continued to gain weight over the years, he withdrew from friends and found solace in video games.
His father, a family physician, grew frustrated with him. “It wasn’t because I was becoming so heavy, but because I didn’t care. I didn’t make any effort to change,” Jared says.
Things went from bad to worse after he graduated from high school and entered Indiana University with no plans for the future. College, he says, was a way to escape his parents and society. With fast-food chains in easy reach, his weight escalated to a chart-topping 425 pounds.
“My weight controlled every single thing I did,” Jared says. He could no longer fit in a seat at the movie theater or even at a desk in the classroom. Walking a block made his back hurt and caused him to sweat profusely.
One night, his college roommate tape-recorded his snoring so Jared could hear for himself how badly sleep apnea was affecting his ability to breathe.
Then his ankles started to swell. “Those things finally started to scare me,” says Jared, who was only 20 years old at the time. “I said, ‘Enough is enough.’” [source: Diet 2007/BHG] Note: To be continued…