Jelly Roll Shares 100-Lb. Weight Loss Transformation
Jelly Roll's discography—Sobriety Sucks, Addiction Kills, A Beautiful Disaster, Self Medicated, Beautifully Broken—reads like an artist's guide to self-deprecation.
And that is how the 2024 CMA Awards nominee for Entertainer of the Year has gone about most of his life, turning his low points—childhood trauma, substance abuse, several stints in jail starting when he was 15—into poignant lyrics that have made him one of the most in demand artists in the world.
"We're all a little broken inside," he said on an October episode of The Sunday Sitdown With Willie Geist, "and I think if we were more honest and vulnerable about where we're broken and how we feel about things, it could create more conversations to grow and move forward."
One topic that can be difficult to discuss, but which Jelly Roll (born Jason Bradley DeFord) has been frank about, is his struggle with his weight, which in 2015 topped 500 pounds.
He didn't let his heftier physique stand in the way of his career—"They say we were too fat to be in the music business, my voice wasn't cool enough, " he recalled in the documentary Jelly Roll: Save Me. "These were all mountains that we had to conquer"—or his dating life, but the 6-foot-1 singer admittedly didn't feel good about it.
"I was so insecure in my body for so many years that I found validation through women," Jelly Roll said on an October episode of the On Purpose With Jay Shetty podcast. "I thought if I could pull pretty women, then I wasn't fat."
And he was admittedly no gentleman, living "double, triple, quadruple lives," recalled the father of daughter Bailee, 16, and son Noah, 8, (with respective exes). Until, that is, met his eventual wife, Bunnie XO, in 2015.
"When I got with Bunnie, I immediately didn't want to talk to nobody [else]," he said, "I just wanted to be with her." They married in August 2016, hours after he proposed to her onstage at a Yelawolf and Deftones concert in Las Vegas.
At the same time, he was finally trying to get a handle on his weight.
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In an August 2018 Instagram post, he called the day the doctor suggested he go to a "meat processor or truck stop" to find a scale that went above 500 pounds one of the most embarrassing days of his life.
"I've been obese since I was a small child," wrote Jelly Roll, who's had that nickname since childhood, courtesy of his mother. "All I've ever known was being fat , and I'm f-----g miserable. I wanna sky dive, bungee jump, ride a bull, parasail, ride roller coasters, I want to LIVE a normal life and have a normal relationship with food. I fight addictions and alcoholism everyday."
Fighting for his life, he started losing weight in late 2016, eventually dropping 200 pounds. But he had gained 60 back, Jelly Roll explained, so he was opening up to his fans to hold himself accountable.
"I don't want to blame it on tour but man it’s so hard to balance life living out of truck stops and always running late to the shows, never getting adequate sleep and all the drinking," he wrote, adding, "TODAY is the day I start over and fight my life long demon again."
And while his new temple wasn't built in a day, Jelly Roll recommitted to looking after his health.
"I’m working out daily… praying and meditating …. Eating better - losing weight," he wrote in a February 2023 update on X. "Making sure I bring the best version of me on my new album and this tour… this is what growth and gratitude look like in real time."
But even though his 3.6 million Instagram followers were aware of his intentions, jaws still dropped when the 39-year-old showed up at the 2024 Academy of Country Music Awards in May looking visibly slimmer after losing more than 70 pounds.
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Less than two weeks earlier he had run a 5K, a feat he was especially proud of after not even being able to walk a whole mile in January.
But he got himself up to where he was running "two to three miles a day," he told People in April, "four to six days a week. I'm doing 20 to 30 minutes in the sauna, six minutes in a cold plunge every day. I'm eating healthy right now."
And he wasn't done.
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"Next year when y’all see me, you won’t recognize me,” Jelly said in an Oct. 23 Instagram video while on his Beautifully Broken Tour. “I’m going to get under a pile of weights in a way that I never have."
Ian Larios, the nutrition coach and chef who's been air-frying Jelly Roll's chicken and rolling bananas in dark chocolate and manuka honey for snacks, said in the video that the "Winning Streak" singer had been "crushing it" on the road.
"He just surpassed his 100-pound weight loss," Larios said. "That 100-pound weight loss goal since his last tour is huge."
Visiting The Pat McAfee Show on Nov. 7, Jelly Roll said he was "down like 120" from where he started.
"It's so cool," he said, "because my culture on tour used to revolve around cocaine and alcohol...But now we're all in our late 30s and 40s, so now we're, like, shooting old-man basketball and having lattes for lunch afterward."
But while the highlights of his journey have been most inspiring, Jelly Roll hasn't reached the summit just yet.
"The weight, for me, right now, it's the mountain in front of me," he said in September. "I'm learning, I'm being very diligent with it. I'm taking it serious, I'm drinking a bunch of water, I'm cold plunging, I'm eating right, I'm doing good."
At the same time, he added, "I just have to fight that little pirate on my shoulder, [those] late nights. I'm a food addict."
His relationship with food has been a battle since birth, he acknowledged.
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"I've always said that I believe obesity is directly connected to mental health," Jelly Roll noted. "I know how easy it is for people to go, 'Just quit eatin' so much, just work out, it's so easy!' I wish I looked at food that way. But I understand it from the perspective of an addict because I know what addiction is."
And he's had to adjust his life to the realities of the road accordingly.
"It took years to be able to be around people doing cocaine and just not be doing it, just to know it's happening in my environment and be okay with that," Jelly Roll continued. "I'm having to take that same approach with food, to be honest, and I'm not ashamed to say it, that I'm having to make those dramatic decisions where I'm like, 'I don't need nothing to eat in my green room!' I need to change my entire relationship with how I look at food."
Still prone to bouts of self-loathing, he said he sometimes scares himself, calling the "shame spiral" the "monster in front of me all the time."
But, Jelly Roll added, "I've got a good support system around me and I will say that all that cliché stuff is real. When they're like, 'Go walk out in the sun and drink water,' you hear it and [it's like], 'It's not that easy, it's hard!' Then I started walking around in the sun and drinking water. I'm like, 'Dude, I feel so much better!'"
To complement Jelly Roll's candor, see what more stars have had to say about their weight loss journeys: