Jared tells story in Spencerville

By Mike Ford, The Delphos Herald
Published:  Monday, March 5, 2007 (1 year, 4 months ago)
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“You don’t just wake up one day weighing 425 pounds,” Jared Fogle told Spencerville students Monday.SPENCERVILLE— “You don’t just wake up one day weighing 425 pounds,” Jared Fogle told Spencerville students Monday.

“You don’t just wake up one day wearing jeans with a 60-inch waistline or a XXXXXXL shirt, either.

It took years and years of work to get to that; years and years of poor decision-making,” he said.

The Subway spokesman delivered a short presentation in the “Walk-in Closet” just prior to dismissal for the day. He stressed the importance of making good decisions while students are still young and healthy.

“Until third grade, I had a normal weight. Then for my eighth birthday, I got a Nintendo,” he said.

Fogle had been active outdoors, playing tennis and other sports until he got the first break-through video game system. How he spent his time became out of balance as he became a five-hour-a-day gamer. That was just during the week. He confesses to having spent six or seven hours per day playing video games on the weekend.

As he spent hour after hour in front of the screen, he snacked on junk food.

“I didn’t care about anything else,” he said.

Fogle got “addicted” to junk food, sneaking away on his bicycle to purchase some in his home town of Indianapolis.

“When I turned 16, I was excited to get my drivers license. Not so I could hang out more with my friends, but so I could have greater access to fast food,” he said.

By the time Fogle was in high school, his weight problem was out of control.

“I couldn’t fit in seats; I couldn’t go to movies and my shoulders would crack,” he said.

After high school, he enrolled at the University of Indiana and began to take responsibility.

“You can run away from a problem or you can look for a positive solution,” he said.

Fogle developed sleep apnea and had difficulty sleeping, often gasping for air in the middle of the night.

“I would go to bed at 8 p.m. and sleep for 12 hours. Now, to a lot of people that’s a lot of sleep but I would feel exhausted when I woke up,” he said.

He began looking for ways to lose weight but none worked. Then one day he walked into a Subway and picked up a nutritional brochure. He counted calories and determined to eat low-fat items from the store’s menu twice per day. That was in 1988.

“I dropped 94 pounds in the first three months but I knew I had to get out of the house, so I started walking 30 minutes a day,” he said.

“In 1998 and 1999, I lost 245 pounds,” he said.

A newspaper article gave his remarkable accomplishment the needed publicity to put him on Subway’s radar. He was contacted by the restaurant chain and is now its spokesman. He appears on America’s television screens with World Wrestling Entertainment champion John Cena and has been on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

Fogle stressed to students the importance of the decisions they make now.

“A few simple right choices now can make a huge difference,” he said, concerning eating and exercising habits.

Fogle took a few questions from students. Though some asked questions such as “were you ever a wrestler?” and “are you married?” one student asked how much he would weigh today had he not started eating at Subway.

Fogle speculated that, had he lived long enough, he would have reached the 700-pound mark.

His appearance was organized after school officials were contacted by the ownership of the Subway store in Spencerville.

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