William Howard Taft is remembered as the heaviest president in American history, a man whose girth inspired jokes, bathtub legends, and even a specially commissioned White House tub. But the story that rarely gets told is the one that came after: the disciplined, determined transformation of a former president who shed more than 100 pounds to become a vigorous, walking Chief Justice. This is not merely a trivia note about a bygone era. It is a case study in second acts, personal reinvention, and the unexpected ways that physical health and professional legacy can intersect.
People remember Taft as a heavy president, but few are aware that he lost a great deal of weight later in life when he headed the court. Indeed, Chief Justice John Roberts himself recently honored Taft and his many remarkable achievements and noted Taft’s struggle and ultimate success in slimming down. The full story of how Taft went from a 354-pound commander-in-chief to a 244-pound chief justice offers lessons about stress, diet, exercise, and the very nature of legacy.
From Cincinnati to the Supreme Court: The Making of a Legal Giant
William Howard Taft was born in 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and served in many public offices from early adulthood. President Benjamin Harrison appointed him U.S. solicitor general in 1890 when Taft was only 32 years old, still the record for the youngest solicitor general in U.S. history. Two years later, Harrison nominated Taft to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which he served on for eight years. In 1900, President William McKinley appointed Taft governor-general of the Philippines, which had recently come under U.S. control after the Spanish-American War. President Teddy Roosevelt appointed him secretary of war in 1904.
In 1908, Taft was elected president. He lost his re-election bid in 1912 when Roosevelt decided to run against him as a third-party candidate, splitting the Republican vote, and opening the way for Woodrow Wilson’s election. When Taft left the White House, he accepted an offer to teach at Yale Law School. But Taft’s dream was to serve as chief justice of the United States. While president, Taft had elevated Edward White from an associate justice to chief justice in 1910. He told his attorney general at that time, “There is nothing I would have loved more than being Chief Justice of the United States.” His wish became reality in 1921, when, after the death of White, President Warren Harding appointed Taft, then 63, to replace him. Taft enjoyed being chief justice so much that he once said, “I don’t remember that I ever was President.”
Weight Loss and the Chief Justice: What Taft Did to Slim Down
What did Taft do to lose all that weight? According to an article in Harvard Health Publishing, written by Dr. Howard E. LeWine, Taft struggled with his weight throughout his entire life. He weighed 243 pounds when he graduated from Yale as an undergraduate (he graduated from Cincinnati Law School), but his weight shot up after that. In 1905, when he served as secretary of war, Taft weighed 314 pounds. He was 5 foot, 11 inches tall. Taft wrote to a British physician and noted expert on obesity, Dr. Nathaniel Yorke-Davies, to ask for advice on what to do. Yorke-Davies replied with detailed letters (which survive today) explaining the steps he should take. The Harvard article summarized Yorke-Davies’ advice to Taft to eat “lean meats, a little fish, vegetables, plain salad, avoidance of sugar, and minimal carbohydrates,” essentially an early version of the keto diet. Taft lost 59 pounds between December 1905 and April 1906.
But Taft was still two years from taking office as president and that is when the pounds came back on in a familiar tale of yo-yo dieting thanks to a stressful job. Taft bore the obvious challenges from serving as president, but also, three months into his presidency, Taft’s wife suffered a stroke. He devoted much time to her care, including helping her regain the ability to speak. All of that triggered stress eating. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his article that during his presidency, Taft gained 75 pounds. One year into his term in 1909, Taft weighed 354 pounds. When he left the White House in 1913, he was 335-340.
And that is how most people today remember Taft — the rotund president who had to order a huge bathtub for the White House to accommodate his immense girth. Indeed, Taft’s weight was a running joke even before he became president: In the early 1900s, he once sent a telegram to Secretary of War Elihu Root, telling him that he “Took long horseback ride today; feeling fine.” The secretary immediately cabled back: “How’s the horse?” As one writer observed, “They made infinite jests about his fatness — and no one heard or repeated the jokes with greater savor than Taft himself. Making a speech he would pause, with an effect of suspense, just long enough to intensify the audience’s attention; then throughout the immense torso and up into the broad features would run little tremors and heavings, rising to a climax in a rumbling chuckle as infectious as only a fat man could achieve, and Taft would tell a story in which the point was, as he would say in an engaging falsetto, ‘on me.'”
Taft’s expansive waistline also generated many stories about him getting stuck in a bathtub while president (you may have learned this as a child). Amazingly, the Smithsonian Magazine took a deep investigative dive into this historical question. Yes, it reports, but this happened in 1909 not at the White House but on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. Specifically, the magazine found a story from 1929, written by one Lewis Freeman, detailing how Taft visited a steamboat named the Oleander that he had taken down the Mississippi River. Freeman interviewed the workers who accompanied Taft on the trip 20 years earlier in this “floating White House.” They showed Freeman the suite where Taft had stayed. They said that they tried to find a bigger bathtub for the suite for Taft’s trip but were unable to do so. The Smithsonian Magazine wrote: “According to Freeman, the crew shared multiple versions of what exactly happened next, but they all agreed on one thing: Taft had ‘made the serious mistake of trying to bathe the whole of his considerable bulk at once.’ Though the president managed to get into the tub, Freeman wrote, ‘it took Archy Butt, a Secret Service man, and two or three state
