Outliers: Taft's battle of the bulge laid path for modern care

You may know William Howard Taft as the 27th president and the only one to become a U.S. chief justice after leaving office. But he is perhaps most famously known for being, well, really fat. It turns out he was also a bit of a trailblazer. Way before Weight Watchers or “The Biggest Loser,” Taft was helping to usher in a modern approach to treating obesity.

Got a nagging doctor? Taft did, way back in the early 1900s. A medical historian has analyzed letters between the two, complete with food diaries and daily weigh-ins.

Have a problem with yo-yo dieting and weight gain? Yep, Taft did, too.

The report offers a rare peek at the history of obesity, through the experiences of one of the first American public figures to struggle openly with weight—and how a doctor aided in an era when physician treatment of obesity was just emerging.

Taft's “rise to political power coincided with this change in medical thinking, which led to the first celebrity weight-loss patient,” Deborah Levine, an assistant professor at Rhode Island's Providence College, told the Associated Press. Her report appeared in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Taft hired British dieting expert Nathaniel Yorke-Davies in 1905, four years before becoming president. Then 314 pounds, Taft was worried about heartburn and other health problems. In his first year with Yorke-Davies, Taft lost 59 pounds, Levine found, only to regain it. Only after leaving the White House did Taft shed significant weight.

The candid exchanges between doctor and patient highlight the ups and downs of weight loss. “I feel in excellent condition. I used to suffer from acidity of stomach, and I suppose that was due to overloading it,” Taft wrote at one point.

Yorke-Davies and Taft had a long-distance relationship. The doctor mailed a list of allowed and forbidden foods—heavy on lean meats and reducing sugar, almost a prelude to the Atkins diet. Taft was to weigh himself daily and mail a weekly report. Levine compared the handwritten weigh-ins and the typed letters to the doctor. Sometimes Taft cheated.

And Yorke-Davies nagged, politely, but a lot. One month, the doctor fussed that Taft's weight loss was only 9 pounds, not the intended 14. When Taft slacked off, the doctor wrote that he'd heard “you are much stouter than you were a few months ago.”

Levine concludes that some core practices—close doctor-patient communication, tracking weight and food diaries—still are in use.

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