Ask anyone about the Subway Diet and they'll tell you about Jared who dropped 245 pounds in a single year just by eating Subway.

If you ever wanted to know how this whole thing got started, keep reading.

Jared Fogle was a student at Indiana University who worked at an adult video store in order to pay his way through college. He sat long hours in a class room, sat long hours behind the counter at the video store while eating snacks, and as a result ended up weighing 425 pounds. 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. He immediately stopped eating breakfast while walking the 1 ½ miles to Subway for lunch and dinner – a sandwich, baked chips and a diet soda. Now instead of a 10,000 calorie per day with no exercise lifestyle, he was eating only about 900 calories while walking 6 miles every day. For Jared the yet named Subway diet made 245 pounds disappear in the span of a single year.

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 Mens Health article, brought the diet to the attention of his advertising people who contacted Jared to verify the story. When the Chicago guys tried to get funding from the national advertising agency for a campaign, they were told it would bomb, so they funded it themselves for a local run in Chicago.

Soon the Subway diet was a success. Soon Jared and the Subway diet were in all the national media, including a guest stint on Oprah. Now it was the national agency's turn to ask about running the ads around the country.

Many people have had success with the Subway diet.

But keep in mind that Jared's extreme program of calorie cutting and extreme weight loss are, in general, potentially dangerous. In general limiting calories while exercising is a well accepted formula for success.