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Jelly Roll is opening up about the start of his weight-loss journey and the steps he took to be the healthiest version of himself.
In a recent interview with Men’s Health, the 41-year-old country star spoke about taking matters into his own hands and deciding to live a healthier lifestyle.
He first started working with podcast host and founder of the weight loss movement, “The Ultimate Human,” Gary Brecka, before finding Ways2Well, a wellness clinic which works to treat the underlying problems, rather than focus on just treating the symptoms.
“The first couple of blood panels were like, how are you alive?” he says.
Jelly Roll said the first blood panels done on him made doctors question how he was still alive. (Jim Dyson/Getty Images)
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Jelly Roll, whose birth name is Jason Bradley DeFord, shared that his inulin levels were “super high,” his testosterone was so low that is was similar to that “of a preteen boy,” his cholesterol was high and so were his A1C levels.
“When I went in there for the test, it was bad. Bad. The world opened up when I seen it on paper. I was like, ‘That’s my testosterone level?’ I mean, dude, we’re talking a 57,” he said. “You can’t get it up without T…I was married to a smoke show, and I was still struggling.”
The “Save Me” singer emphasized that his main goal wasn’t to lose weight but was “wanting to know what’s happening within me,” although he knew that weight loss would likely follow.
While he knew getting his physical health in check was an important step in his journey, he also understood that he needed to tackle his mental health, and admitted to seeking “therapy about my overeating.”
Jelly Roll said he started treating his addiction to food like he treated his addiction to cocaine. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
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“I started treating my food addiction like what it was: an addiction. Why did I treat cocaine a certain way? I went to meetings for cocaine and found a sponsor and detoxed off of it and shit myself and went through real hard life-changing emotional choices to get off cocaine and codeine,” he explained. “I didn’t look at the food addiction different. Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started changing everything for me. When I started really looking at the source of why I was eating. What was I eating for?”
He explained that in the eighth grade he began going down the wrong path, adding he “thought I was something I wasn’t,” and that in his youth, “I’d let you kill me to prove to you, I was tough.”
This path eventually led him to go to prison for drug-related crimes and aggravated robbery. During his time in prison, Jelly Roll found religion, got his GED, began songwriting and began turning his life around.
“It took 12, 15 years of being in and out of the system and going through s— and dealing with drugs and drug addicts to realize, man, that was never actually who I was,” he said.
The singer said he felt shame about his past and his weight. (Marc Grimwade/WireImage)
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“The way shame sometimes shows itself is not always the way we expect it to be,” he later added. “We think shame is somebody in the streets on their knees, with their head down. But shame sometimes is pride. Sometimes shame is just bravado. Behind real bravado, I can normally find shame. I can normally find guilt. I can normally find insecurity. I was the biggest, the loudest, the toughest, the meanest, the growliest, the fattest. There’s normally deep inside of that a really, really small, insecure human. I was that, for sure. Then a by-product of that was I got fat as f—.”
Jelly Roll has previously spoken about his progress, sharing on “The Joe Rogan Experience” in December 2025 that he has lost 300 pounds since starting his weight-loss journey in 2022 at over 500 pounds.
In December 2024, he told his wife, Bunnie XO on her podcast, “Dumb Blonde,” that he is doing this publicly in order “to be honest about my struggles with it with people.” He then shared a very specific goal he has in mind.
“I wanna be on the cover of ‘Men’s Health’ by March of 2026,” he said. “That’s my new goal. So I wanna have one of the biggest transformations.”
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Jelly Roll gave an update on his weight loss. (Getty Images)
The singer described being at his heaviest as being a “never-ending sadness,” saying it felt like he “was a prisoner to my own body,” and that “every decision I made in life had to be based on my weight.”
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“When this journey started, I couldn’t get a full mile in in that 30 minutes,” he told Men’s Health. “Now I could put on a pair of tennis shoes, walk out that door, do a mile loop around Hollywood Boulevard, and be back in 12 minutes and 25 seconds.”