The subway diet is a diet plan created by Jared Fogle, an Indiana University student who claims to have lost over 200 pounds by following the plan. This diet plan received immense publicity during early 2000 due to a widely marketed advertisement campaign carried out by the Subway restaurant chain. The subway diet requires users to substitute two daily meals with subs from the restaurant chain.

According to Jared Fogle, he weighted approximately 425 pounds or 193 kg when he was at his junior year at Indiana University. Receiving very little or no physical exercise, Fogle eventually got concerned about his health and sought medical attention. It is there he learned that unless he doesn’t do something to lose weight immediately, his health was in grave danger. Therefore, this prompted him to try various methods and techniques to try to lose weight. After being unsuccessful time after time, he supposedly wanted to attempt something new and decided to try a subway diet, eating sandwiches as a substitute for major meals of the day.

Thus, he decided to walk 1.5 miles or 2.4 km daily to a subway restaurant which was situated near his college apartment and substituted lunch and dinner with subs that were offered at the restaurant while skipping breakfast. In addition to subs, he also had baked potato chips and diet soda from the restaurant. Fogle apparently reduced his daily calorie intake to nearly 900 calories from an initial daily calorie consumption of 10,000 and this rapid decrease in turn helped him to lose 245 pounds or 111kg, in just one year. Therefore, a subway diet helped Fogle to effectively lose a significant amount of weight in a relatively short time period.

Ryan Coleman who was a friend of Fogle wrote an article about Fogle and his subway diet to the Indiana Daily Student which was republished in the Men’s Health Magazine under the article “Crazy Diets that Work”. The story of the subway diet eventually reached Bob Ocwieja, a Chicago Subway owner, Richard Croad ,the Subway’s Chicago advertisement agency’s creative director and Barry Krause,owner of that agency . Subsequently, they traced Fogle and after verifying his story that decided to carry out a regional advertisement campaign which included Fogle describing his story. The advertisement about the subway diet initially aired regionally and after a while Subway decided to air it nationally. This advertisement campaign was a massive success and as a result, the subway’s sales increased by 18% during the following year.

Jared Fogle or The Subway Guy, the creator of the subway diet, now works for the restaurant chain. He travels the country promoting the benefits of healthy diets.