A quick recap: Fogle was the 425-pound college student who lost 245 pounds in one year by eating healthy, low-fat submarine sandwiches from a certain chain that shall remain nameless.

The exact diet was as follows:

Lunch: a six-inch turkey sub, no mayo, no oil and a bag of baked potato chips.
Dinner: a foot-long veggie sub.
Drinks: unlimited diet soda throughout the day.
No-no’s: cheese, mayonnaise and oil.
Exercise: lots of walking.

Seems simple enough. I think I’ll follow it for two weeks and see what happens.
First, though, the following pertinent data for before-and-after comparison purposes.
Height: 5′ 5″
Weight: None of your business.
Measurements: See above.
Hmm, maybe we should start again here…
Height: 5′ 5″
Weight: What’s it to you? Look, I’ll tell you if I lose any weight, okay? You’ll just have to take my word for it. All right, here goes…

Day One:
This is going to take some willpower. It is hard to get to sleep at night. My first day proved to be anything but positive.

Day Two:
I’m hungry.

Day Three:
I write these entries at night after jotting down notes throughout the day. Some of the concerns I’ve come up with so far:
— Fatigue
— Where is the dairy in this diet? — Weakness
— Miserable (lethargic, anxious, edgy)
— Breakfast!?
— The food is gone too fast and then there’s nothing to look forward to—the meals are not spread out enough.

Day Four:
More concerns:
— No variety
— Loss of weight (rapid)
— Expensive. $12 to $13 per day normally, which for me is damn expensive, though I work all the angles and use every coupon that I can beg, borrow or steal. It all helps.

Day Five:
Perhaps I had to give it a few days to settle in. I am still feeling drowsy and uncomfortable.

Day Six :
Hunger consumes me like an inferno. I verge on being hallucinatory, I swear. Harrowing.

Day Seven:
Have I mentioned Coquette? We live together and have a difficult co-existence at the best of times. She looks at me strangely these days and doesn’t even try to understand. I must admit I’m jealous when I see her eating normally. Everything she puts in her mouth looks good to me, which wouldn’t be so bad except that Coquette is my cat.

Day Eight:
I can see somewhat of a change in (ahem) some areas of my body. Nothing drastic, though.

Day Nine:
On the ninth day, I let the horse run free, ‘cuz the desert had turned to sea…. Uh-oh. I’m either hallucinating or picking up ’70s AM radio transmissions on my dental fillings.

Day Ten:
A quote from Kierkegaard keeps echoing through my mind: “the self is only that which it is in the process of becoming.”

Day Eleven:
I must admit that I do have some amazing bursts of energy following this streamlined food plan, but I have to pace myself or I’ll trip on my own pant legs—why won’t these pants stay up? (No cheap comments, please.)

Day Twelve
I’m so tempted to cheat, especially at the end of the day…Maybe just some mayo on the veggie sub? No! Journalistic integrity and all that. But I feel so reckless—so reckless at the end of the day.

Day Thirteen:
Actually, Coquette herself is starting to look good to me. Thirteen may be her unlucky day. She wisely keeps her distance. Here, kitty, kitty…

Day Fourteen:
The final day, and I find myself not wanting to come within 10 feet of another submarine sandwich as long as I live.

I mean, somebody did this for a year? The weight loss is fairly substantial, though. Ten to 12 pounds or so. Maybe more. I’m wearing things I wore in grade eight. Time for a new wardrobe.

At the end of it all, there is the problem of reintegration and the best way to return to normalcy. When you do extreme things to your body there can sometimes be a backlash (and if you don’t think this was extreme, try it sometime).

I’m determined not to succumb to longest recorded pig-out, so I start to gradually normalize my diet. I gain back a pound or two, but I’m still well ahead of the game, all things considered. Would I recommend this to anyone else? It’s not for me to say, really—we must make our own decisions in life—but it does work. How could it not? Jared Fogle, wherever you are, I wish you well. You have the discipline of a saint.