William Howard Taft – Live & Learn

William Howard Taft, (1857-1930) was the 27th President of the United States.
The only massively obese man ever to be the president of the United States
He struggled mightily to control his weight
Endured humiliation from cartoonists who delighted in his corpulent figure
His weight-loss program was startlingly contemporary
His difficulties keeping the pounds off would be familiar to many Americans today
On advice of his doctor, he went on a low-fat, low-calorie diet. He avoided snacks.
Meals were to be eaten at certain times and meats were to be weighed. Taft was to eat a small portion of lean meat or fish at every meal, cooked vegetables at lunch and dinner (no butter), a plain salad, and stewed or baked fruit (unsweetened). He got a single glass of “unsweetened” wine at lunch.
He kept a careful diary of what he ate and weight himself daily.
The tale is strikingly modern…The self-monitoring — weighing himself daily, keeping a food diary — are “the fundamental tenets of changing behavior,” said Dr. Kimberly Gudzune, an obesity researcher at Johns Hopkins. “Keep yourself accountable.”
He hired a personal trainer and rode a horse to exercise
Like many dieters today, Taft lost weight and regained it, fluctuating from more than 350 to 255 lbs.
After he had lost 60 pounds…people told him he looked good, yet he was “continuously hungry.”
Researchers were struck by Taft’s persistent hunger pangs. Losing a substantial amount of weight and keeping it off amounts to telling the body it is starving…“One of the most important drives we have is to prevent starvation,” Dr. Hirsch said.
By the time Taft was inaugurated as president in 1909, he had regained all he had lost, and more, weighing 354 pounds. He became the butt of jokes, with many relishing a story that he had gotten stuck in a White House bathtub.
But Taft never gave up. When he died in 1930, he weighed 280 pounds.