Jelly Roll is opening up about what it took to lose nearly 300 lbs.
In an interview with Men’s Health published in January 2025, he explained, “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.’ 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.”
The musician also revealed he was hospitalized. “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,” Jelly Roll shared. “I didn’t look at the food addiction different. Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started changing everything for me.”
Though Jelly Roll didn’t use GLP-1, he was prescribed metformin, a drug used to treat diabetes. Keep scrolling to learn more about the drug and how it helped the singer lose weight.
Metformin Is Meant to Help Treat Diabetes
According to Harvard Health, the drug was approved for use in Europe in 1959 and in the United States in 1995. It is the most widely used drug for the treatment of diabetes for people who cannot control their blood sugar through diet and exercise.
Metformin Has Other Benefits
Jelly Roll Matt Jelonek/Getty Images
Harvard Health also noted that the drug has other benefits. These include the treatment of prediabetes (the drug can delay the onset of symptoms), gestational diabetes (which some pregnant women develop), polycystic ovarian syndrome (the drug can help regular the menstrual cycle), and weight gain from the use of antipsychotic medicines.
Researchers are also currently studying if the drug can help lower the risk of cancer for people who have type 2 diabetes, lower the risk of dementia and stroke and prevent age-related diseases.
Why Jelly Roll Used Metformin
Jelly Roll worked with nurse practitioner Danese Raxroad, who treated him through Ways2Well. Jelly Roll was diagnosed with levels of insulin he described to Men’s Health as “super high.”
“Insulin is designed to help glucose enter the cell,” Raxroad told the outlet. “When you have an excessive amount of insulin, it forces your body to store fat. So switching those receptors and switching what Jelly’s body was signaling with insulin helped him rapidly adjust his insulin resistance. I wasn’t doing a big science experiment. It was just meal timing and eating real foods.”
The goal for Jelly Roll was that the drug would help reduce his triglycerides, the fat cells in his blood.
Does Metformin Have Side Effects?
Like many drugs, metformin does have side effects. According to Harvard Health, these can include minor gastrointestinal problems such as stomach upset and nausea; some people can also have a severe allergic reaction or suffer from lactic acidosis, a build up of lactic acid in the bloodstream.
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