‘Subway guy’ visits area schools
Jared Fogle is best known for his 60-inch blue jeans and a 6-inch turkey on wheat.
On Friday, “the Subway guy” brought both as he visited students at Mullan Road Elementary School to inspire them to eat healthily and be active.
“He’s like, my hero,” said 12-year-old Shannon Leclaire, who, along with a gaggle of her giggling girlfriends, ran up to have her picture taken with the Subway guru as if he were Brad Pitt. “He lost all that weight; it’s so cool.”
Fogle was in town last weekend for the Spokane Heart Walk, an American Heart Association fundraiser sponsored by the sandwich giant. His visit included stops at two Spokane-area elementary schools, including Mullan Road and Windsor Elementary School in Cheney.
Fogle is famous for losing 245 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches twice a day, and little else. He was discovered after a college newspaper in Indiana ran a story about his infamous “Subway diet.”
“I was just this little kid from Indiana, it wasn’t supposed to be anything really big,” Fogle said.
Now being “the Subway guy” is a full-time job for Fogle, who eats Subway for free and travels 200 days a year with the company promoting a healthy lifestyle and telling his story. He’s also been in numerous television commercials holding up his gigantic pants.
“Who has seen me on TV at least once,” Fogle asked the kids at Mullan Road. Every hand in the room shot up.
Then students at the school sat in awe as Principal Paul Stone stepped into the gigantic pants once worn by Fogle when he weighed more than 425 pounds.
“It’s the best visual aid you could ever have,” said Fogle, who has maintained his weight at 190 pounds since 1998.
Fogle told the kids how his weight problem started in the third grade, when he ate too much fast food and played too many video games.
“By the time I got to middle school I was so much bigger than the other kids it wasn’t even funny,” Fogle said.
Eventually he became too obese to fit in the seats at the movies, or to drive a car, he told students.
“I want to make sure that if I come back here in a few years, you don’t fit in my pants,” Fogle said.