There was a flitter of excitement in the Suffolk News-Herald newsroom on Wednesday. A celebrity was in town. A man widely known by one name — Jared — was visiting a local restaurant.

Jared “the Subway Guy” was in the area to speak to children in Norfolk and also visited the new North Main Street Subway location.

Jared Fogle, 36, has been doing advertisements and in-store appearances for Subway for the last 15 years, ever since he lost about 245 pounds following what’s now called “the Subway diet.”

In college, Fogle started eating Subway sandwiches twice a day for a year to drop the impressive amount of weight.

People have done a lot of crazy things to lose weight, including pills, supplements, surgery, detoxes, just eating grapefruit or eating appetite-suppressing candy. While most of those are extreme, I can’t imagine losing weight like Jared did.

I get that you can make a lot of different sandwich combinations at Subway, but honestly I would get sick of it, though I am guilty of getting the same thing every time I go to certain restaurants.

I eat a lot of leftovers throughout the workweek, but I do like to mix it up a little bit. And even though I had Subway for lunch, I bet I won’t eat that again for at least a week.

Jared says he doesn’t eat Subway every day anymore. Now he eats at the chain restaurant just a couple of times a week. But even after 15 years, he says, he is not sick of eating at Subway.

Jared said his struggles with weight began as a child, and now his passion is talking to children about developing healthy habits. At his Wednesday appearances in Norfolk, he passed out Fit for Life 15 Day Challenge cards, giving students a tool to track their intake of vegetables, fruit and water and exercise time versus time spent in front of the computer, television or video games.

Kudos to Jared for using his fame to address such an important topic and try to reach children across the country.