Jelly Roll has been steadily losing weight since 2022 — and he’s not slowing down his progress anytime soon.
The country star (real name is Jason DeFord) has candidly discussed his weight for nearly a decade. In 2015, he weighed more than 500 pounds, revealing in a 2018 Instagram post that he was once advised by a doctor to visit a “meat processor or truck stop” to find out his actual weight because typical scales only reached 500 lbs.
“It was one of the most embarrassing days of my life,” Jelly Roll recalled at the time.
Though Jelly shed pounds off and on in the years that followed, it wasn’t until 2022 that he began taking his weight loss journey seriously.
“I’m going to spend the first couple months of the year just focusing on family and health,” he told Music Mayhem in December 2022. “I lost some weight this year in 2022, but in 2023 I wanna finally conquer the demon. I don’t leave for a big tour until about the middle of the year. So I plan on taking the first half of the year to tighten the album up and get some work in.”
Three years later, Jelly Roll has lost 275 lbs. and counting.
Keep scrolling to see what the musician has said about his weight loss journey:
How Jelly Roll’s Weight Loss Journey Began
“I’ve been fat my whole life,” Jelly Roll said on “The Bobby Bones Show” in 2022, revealing that his mom nicknamed him Jelly Roll because he was a “chubby” kid.
“She started calling me Jelly Roll when I was young, and I spent the next 20 years trying to grow into the name,” he added.
Jelly Roll revealed on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in December 2025 that he told his family — which includes wife Bunnie XO, daughter Bailee and son Noah — that he would start working on losing weight for years before actually following through. He recalled the day that he finally took the first step in the process. Though it was raining hard outside, Jelly Roll remained determined to go for a walk.
“In my mind, I was like ‘I’m going outside,’ ya know? I was like, ‘I’m done lying to y’all and I’m done lying to me. I told y’all I was gonna go do this walk and I’m gonna do this walk,’” he explained. “I’m coming back from that walk and I’m coming up my driveway, its up a big hill. I’m coming up that driveway hill, and my family’s all there. Cheering me on, clapping, hands up.”
He continued, “I’d done nothing by lie to them for years about this weight. I never proved to them that I was gonna change or be a man of my word in any regard. They had every reason not to go out there and cheer me on.”
Why Jelly Roll Avoided Using GLP-1 Medications for Weight Loss
In his January 2026 cover story for Men’s Health, Jelly Roll revealed why he chose not to use GLP-1 medications, including Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy, to help achieve his weight loss goals.
“I just remember everyone telling me GLP-1s, or taking the Ozempic or the Mounjaro, ‘Listen, it’s gonna hurt your stomach a little bit,’” he said. “I’ve treated my body so bad, I can’t believe God’s gave me this voice for this long. I didn’t deserve it. I literally didn’t do it out of fear.”
Jelly Roll Treated His ‘Addiction’ to Food
In addition to exercising and making lifestyle changes, Jelly Roll used therapy to treat his food addiction.
“Even before I got into getting my blood work done, I went and got mental health therapy about my overeating. 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 s*** myself and went through real hard life-changing emotional choices to get off cocaine and codeine,” he explained to Men’s Health. “I didn’t look at the food addiction different. Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started changing everything for me.”
How Jelly Roll’s Weight Loss Improved His Sex Life
Jelly Roll opened up about his intimacy struggles with his wife before he lost weight.
“My sex life with my wife was horrible,” he said during “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “Dude, I married a f***ing big-tittied, blond, beautiful woman, you know what I mean? I married the kind of woman that makes you smile when you cry. I couldn’t even get aroused, I was so big.”
However, now that he’s lost a significant amount of weight, Jelly Roll said his sex life has improved.
“I feel like I’m a teenager, dog,” he joked to Men’s Health. “I have the sex drive of a 17-year-old again. I’m f***ing pouncing on my wife. We’re having daytime sex again. It’s f***ing awesome.”
Jelly Roll Isn’t Done With His Weight Loss Journey
Jelly Roll told Men’s Health that he doesn’t feel like he reached his goal weight yet.
“I don’t have a goal weight, I have a feeling weight, and I don’t feel it yet. I’ll know when I feel it, because I’ll finally be there. But, man, I’ve worked really hard and lost the weight the right way,” he said. “I feel the weight loss in every facet. Whether it’s basketball and how I dribble or move, or how I can breathe running up and down a court. I feel it when I sleep and my hip hurts less and I can roll over easier without making a big of a rumble. Or the fact that me and my wife can fit on the same bed again.”
Jelly Roll has also explored the idea of surgery to remove the excess skin he’s been left with after his weight loss.
“There’s so much skin under here. I’m starting to meet with skin surgeons to talk about possibly cutting skin in the next year. That’s probably what I have the weirdest relationship with. It’s like, I’m proud of it because I earned it,” he said. “It’s a symbol of a war that I fought with myself. But equally, it is in the f****ing way. So it’s just, you keep looking in the mirror, like, If that wasn’t there, dude, I’d be fire. So, [I’ll] probably have to clip these titties off eventually.”
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