Mention the diet that relies on eating sandwiches in place of two meals a day and people will instantly recognize Jared and the Subway Diet. This article goes into details about how the commercials and the famous diet got their start.

Jared Fogle was a student at Indiana University who worked at an adult video store in order to pay his way through college. His weight reached 425 pounds thanks to sitting around all day - in class and at work - munching on snacks. Needless to say his weight and health situation had become critical. Jared wanted to find a way to lose weight.

He tried and failed with many diets because he had too much time and too much temptation to cheat. One day he noticed a Subway sandwich store about a mile and a half from his apartment. Unknown to Jared he was about to take his first step towards the Subway diet. Jared changed his daily diet to nothing but a sandwich, baked chips and a diet soda for lunch and dinner, walking the 3 mile round trip for each meal. He went from consuming 10,000 calories daily to about 900, while adding a 6 mile hike to his daily routing. One year later Jared's Subway diet had melted 245 pounds from his frame.

How did Jared become a nationally recognized figure? After losing the weight Jared ran into a friend who worked with the school paper. After Jared told him how he had lost so much weight, this guy turned it into a feature for the paper. Someone at Men's Health magazine read about Jared and decided to include his diet in a feature about crazy diets that work. A local Chicago Subway owner read the Men's Health article, brought the diet to the attention of his advertising people who contacted Jared to verify the story. The local agency brought the idea to Subway's national ad agency, but they hated the idea, so the local guys paid out of pocket for Chicago commercials featuring the Subway diet.

The campaign around the Subway diet became huge. Suddenly Jared and his Subway diet were everywhere - in newspapers, on television, even on Oprah. Subway's national ad people contacted the Chicago ad people about airing the ad nationally.

The Subway diet has worked for a lot of people. But keep in mind that Jared's extreme program of calorie cutting and extreme weight loss are, in general, potentially dangerous. A little more moderation is needed, but exercise and cutting calories are a proven one two punch combination in the fight against obesity.