Everyone is familiar with the Subway Diet featuring Jared, the guy who lost 245 pounds in a year by walking and replacing two meals a day with Subway sandwiches.

Now, as Paul Harvey would say, it's time for the rest of the story. Read further for a brief history of the subway diet.

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. Jared realized his weight was critical and so started looking for a way to drop some pounds.

He tried and failed with many diets because he had too much time and too much temptation to cheat. But then he found a Subway shop near his dorm. The seed of the Subway diet was planted. 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.

OK, but how did it become a commercial success? After losing the weight Jared ran into a friend who worked with the school paper. He didn't recognize Jared at first, and when he heard the weight loss story decided to write an article about it. Men's Health magazine picked up the story as part of an article about weird diets that work.

When a Chicago Subway owner read the story he contacted his advertising agency about making it into an ad. 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.

Needless to say the Subway diet became a huge hit. It was a natural for Chicago based Oprah to feature Jared and his Subway diet on her popular national show.

The national ad agency came back, egg firmly on face, to ask if the ads could be run nationally.

The Subway diet has worked for a lot of people. Be careful about extreme diet changes or extreme weight loss, as were practiced by Jared. A little more moderation is needed, but exercise and cutting calories are a proven one two punch combination in the fight against obesity.