Buff Jared steps out at Utah Heart Walk

If you've been anywhere around a TV, a newspaper, Oprah, a hoagie-happy dieter or a certain sandwich shop for the past 3 1/2 years, you've certainly heard of Jared Fogle. Best known as "Jared The Subway Guy," he's the college kid who amazingly ate his way out of 245 pounds and right into pop-culture phenom status as the fast-food chain's masticating mascot and fad-diet founder.

The dieting celebrity — who used to wear pants so massive you could've wrapped 10 six-inch-long sandwiches around his waist — was in town this weekend to help promote the annual Heart Walk.

To answer the pressing question you may have wondered about the much-ballyhooed reformer of his 425-pound frame and the sandwich and weight-loss worlds:

No, he has not yet been contacted about duking it out with Richard Simmons in a Fox-TV celebrity boxing match.

OK, to answer the other questions you may have:

Yes, he gets all of his sub grub for free and he still eats there a couple of times a week.

"I'm not quite like Happy Gilmore yet where I get the free-Subway-for-life card," he said, "but hopefully that will be coming."

And, no, Jared hasn't gained all of his weight back, either. He maintains around 190 — much to the chagrin of Subway's competitors, no doubt.

"I would love to be a fly on the boardroom of Blimpie's and McDonald's and these other places," he said, "and hear the evil things they probably say about me."

It couldn't be any worse than what's on some Internet sites devoted solely to ripping on him, his commercials and his former eating lifestyle and weight. He laughs it off, having dealt with worse things.

The American Heart Association certainly didn't have an evil word to say about Jared or Subway of Utah on Saturday. As he'll do at about 30 different heart walks this year, he presented the AHA with a check for more than $6,000. In all, Subway donated $60,000 to the event, which had about 2,000 participants and will raise more than $200,000 to help fight heart disease and strokes.

Jared participated in the downtown street march, but he did more talking than walking. He stayed busy gripping and grinning with inspired admirers who'd shake his hand, snap photos with him, ask for his story or congratulate him. Then there were those who simply stared, did double-takes and whispered while he whisked by.He joked that the constant attention he gets is similar to that of beautiful women, well, except that he doesn't get whistled at and (no offense) he's not a beautiful woman. Plenty of people still gawked, though.