Awkward Questions for...Jared, the Subway Guy

Maybe you haven't heard, but some guy lost a couple hundred pounds by eating almost nothing but Subway sandwiches for years. Okay, so you've heard. Jared Fogle and his bedspread-sized fat pants have been a fixture of the fast-food chain's advertising for almost a decade now, yet in some ways he remains a mystery. When's the last time he had to pay cash at a Subway store? Does he ever sneak into a Quiznos, just for variety's sake? And what does his wife think of all this? (Spoiler alert: They're divorced! Who knew?) Let's get to the awkward questions.

Let's start with the pants: Is it one pair? Or do you use different kinds of pants for different occasions?

Usually I have just one pair, and it is a 60-inch pair. It is indeed the one I actually wore when I weighed 425 pounds. Right now, I'm on a nationwide tour, aptly called the Tour de Pants, to celebrate my tenth year of keeping the weight off. At the end of the tour, we're going to retire them. Hopefully I'll never need them again. So we're taking them for one last hurrah.

I went through all these different wardrobe changes as I lost the weight. At one point I had 50 or 60 garbage bags of clothes that didn't fit me anymore, and I gave them all away to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. But I kept a few pairs of pants, and it's a good thing I did because they're the greatest visual aid you could want when I go and talk to kids.

What's your level of face recognition like?

It's always high, although when I'm in New York and L.A., I'm probably left alone more than anywhere else in the country, because people here are used to seeing high-profilie people. My friends love to follow about five feet behind me because they love to watch people's reactions as they pass by.

I've been trying to think of a parallel for your kind of fame, but it's hard to think of a good one. The closest I came was Dave Thomas from Wendy's or Orville Redenbacher, but they both founded the companies they represented. You were just a customer.

Mine's such a unique form of well-known. I don't consider it a celebrity by any means. I'm recognizable, I'm well known. People have no problem coming up and saying hi, asking me "Did you really do it?", sharing their own weight-loss stories. It's been an amazing thing. It's part of why I'm still doing the ads, here 10 years later. I've tried to change as little as possible over these 10 years. You try to maintain some level of privacy, but at the same time my life's an open book.

So besides a Q&A with Portfolio, what else is on the agenda for the Tour de Pants

I went to the Super Bowl, I'll be going to the Final Four and some of the Nascar races Subway sponsors, just continuing to share the message of eating healthy and living a healthy, active lifestyle.

And in addition to that I'm be going to a lot of schools all across the country this year, just to give the kids a positive message about eating healthy and more than anything, just not to make the same mistakes as I did growing up, and hopefully not to ever have to weigh 425 pounds and wear a 60-inch pair of pants like I did. A few years ago, I started my own foundation, called the Jared Foundation, to fight childhood obesity. It's a not-for-profit that we're taking nationwide now for the first time. With the help of the folks at Subway we're going to try to raise $2 million this year.

[Ed note: The Jared Foundation plans to give out 20 $50,000 grants to support initiatives to fight obesity in schools. Applications can be found here.]

You've been parodied on The Simpsons, Saturday Night LIve and South Park. What's your favorite pop-culture incarnation of yourself?

The SNL one was pretty funny, where Jimmy Fallon played me. He did that Sub Shack commercial, where instead of losing weight they all gained weight.

There was a great reference I liked in Austin Powers, where the character Fat Bastard loses all this weight at the end of the second or third movie loses all this weight, and when Mike Myers asks him how he did it, he says "I did like Jared in the Subway commercials." That was fun.

Do you feel an obligation to support Mike Huckabee, since he shares your experience of defeating obesity?

Here's the ironic part about Huckabee: He and I were on the Jane Pauley show two or three years ago. That was the first time I ever met the guy, well before he was ever running for president. I'll give it up to him. He looks great, he's kept the weight off. Anyone who can campaign like those guys have to campaign, the hours, the crazy schedules, and can keep that weight off -- that's fantastic. But no, I'm sort of an independent guy in that area.

I know you don't stick to the Subway diet anymore, but you still eat there, right?

Yes, several times a week.

So when you go into a Subway store, do you pay? Do they just recognize you? Do you have a special card or badge you can flash?

I sort of do it all those ways. It's weird now -- in the past four or five months, they've got new menu panels up in the Subway stores, and my face is on the low-fat menu. And they've renamed it the Fresh Fit Jared Subs. But no, I have not had to pay for Subway in about 10 years, and that's been a nice perk of the job. I have a Subway cash card that they're nice enough to give me, and obviously a lot of the owners recognize me and I don't even need the cash card.

Have you ever ordered in a Subway and not been recognized?

There's been a few times, absolutely. Sometimes, with my crazy road schedule, we'll be in random cities and we'll pop in, and every now and then they don't recognize me, which is a breath of fresh air.

Is your job with Subway a full-time gig?

I'm actually self-employed, not full-time. But I travel well over 200 days a year with Subway, all over the world, doing a lot of stuff in local markets, a lot of stuff with the American Heart Association, so between that and the national events we do it's a pretty reasonable schedule.

You may have eaten more Subway sandwiches than any other living person. Do they use you for R&D? Do you ever send suggestions for new sandwiches to corporate?

No, they don't! I wish I could develop my own sandwich. That'd be sort of cool. I don't know what I'd put in it. But I do know my favorite sandwich these days is the Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki. It's one of their newer ones.

Can you eat Quiznos if you want to, or does your contract with Subway forbid that?

Well, I don't exactly get electroshock therapy if were to somehow eat it, but no, you're not going to see me eat it. I haven't eaten other fast food in almost 10 years now. I really have no desire to. It's like a past life now.

You went to Indiana University. Can you sing the fight song?

Let's see, hold on...If you get me started, I can do it. [Pause] Hold on, hold on. [Pause] Gosh. [Pause] This is killing me. Now I'm getting my high school fight song.

Okay, skip it. Your wife is a pediatrician, right?

Well, I'm no longer married, No. 1, and she was a pediatric RN. But I've been divorced for a while now, so I'm single-single.

Damn that Wikipedia. Well, it's good to have it out there that you're single again, anyway, right?

Absolutely. Spread the word!