President Taft's Weight Loss Daily Diet Was Alarmingly Scarce

Restrictive weight loss plans are tough to like and tougher to follow. Nonetheless, they can be incredibly tempting if you're desperate to get thinner. Just ask William Howard Taft, the 27th president of the United States and someone who struggled to lose pounds so desperately that he went on an alarmingly scarce diet.

Even before he became president, Taft found his girth uncomfortable. At approximately 6 feet tall, he weighed well over 300 pounds, making him extremely obese by BMI calculators. To get trimmer, Taft sought the assistance of weight loss physician Nathanial E. Yorke-Davis. After corresponding with Taft (the two never met), the physician created a plan that helped Taft shed 60 pounds; unfortunately, Taft gained a third of it back. As a result, he endured cruel "fat joke" taunts throughout his years in the public eye.

What kept Taft from staying the course? For starters, his diet was pretty strict. To be fair, Taft's day didn't start off too terribly: He was allowed warm lemon water, a good way to hydrate and get some lemon-related health benefits. But his meals became rather bleak from there. Breakfast included lean meat and two biscuits. Lunch was more lean meat, one biscuit, a small portion of unseasoned veggies, and unsweetened fruit. By the time dinner rolled around, it was a little fish and meat, a clear broth, and those veggies, fruit, an unadorned salad, and maybe a couple more biscuits.

Taft's meal plan wasn't just dull. It probably lacked palate-pleasing taste, too. Nutrition expert Dr. Eric Rimm described the diet to CNN as "food-focused" and not "flavor-focused."

Reports of Taft's diet don't indicate that spices were used to their fullest capacity. That's too bad for the president, because it's possible to leverage no-calorie and low-calorie spices to dress up meals and encourage weight loss. In fact, a 2021 review in the Journal of Functional Foods found that adding cinnamon, coriander, turmeric, and ginger to foods could help with weight management.

This type of restrictive and bland diet can set up anyone for failure, as family physician Dr. Sarah Halter explained in a UW Medicine interview. "If you're told not to eat things that you like, maybe for the first few days you can resist eating them," she noted. "But then your brain will start taking over and you're going to want what you can't have." (Here are some signs your diet is doing more harm than good.)

And that's what happened to Taft. Taft reportedly mentioned that he always felt like he was hungry — not the mark of a lasting food plan. To make matters worse, as president, he attended social gatherings and threw dinners that included countless temptations that weren't part of the original diet.

When he wasn't eating with friends and family, Taft was, well, eating. According to Elizabeth Jaffray, the housekeeper for the White House, Taft had a big morning meal that fit his tremendous appetite: juicy steaks, bread and butter, a couple of oranges, and coffee loaded with sugar and cream (via Politico). He eventually shot up to around 350 pounds and remained there for his term. Some people around Taft tried to intervene. Jaffray mentioned in a tell-all book that she spoke to Taft about his weight because she was concerned. She even enlisted the help of First Lady Nellie Taft, but Taft good-naturedly rebuffed their suggestions that he alter his eating habits.

To Taft's credit, he eventually enjoyed what you might call a "weight win." First, he ditched the celebrity weight loss doctor during his presidency. Then, he turned to a different physician after he lost the presidential race to Woodrow Wilson in 1912. And it worked: Within a year, he was down to around 270 pounds. His appearance so radically improved that the New York press wrote a story about his transformation. At the time, he told journalists that his secret was leaving potatoes, bread, most alcohol, and fatty meats and fish behind.