Jelly Roll isn’t the man he used to be, and that’s a good thing. The singer has lost more than 100-pounds and is aiming to lose 100 more.
And along the way, Jelly says he’s learned something he wants to pass on to others on a similar weight loss journey.
Jelly Roll sat down with chef Phillip Frankland Lee and pro skateboarder Neen Williams on their “Not a D*** Chance” podcast. He told them, “I encourage all really obese people to be patient that first month because your body is going through so many early changes that you’re not going to see the results you think you’re entitled to.”
Jelly Roll says that initial phase seeing little to no results has been the hardest thing in his weight loss journey so far. He told Lee and Williams that when he would follow his eating plan to the letter and not see the scale drop dramatically, he’d want to give up. “It’s a waste of time. It’s my hormones, I got a bad thyroid. Really, man, it takes your body quite awhile,” he explained.
Jelly Roll says despite feeling discouraged, he stuck with the program. And that tenacity paid off. “There’s a moment, dog, the turning point, and then I started seeing the scale go down every week and I was like ‘oooh, you know, to me, it’s a little fire. I’m like loss, loss, more loss. Let’s climb the bleachers, let’s go play basketball.”
Jelly Roll Says the Key to Turning His Life Around Was ‘Finding Purpose’
The hosts told Jelly Roll that the theme of their podcast is people who face adversity and refuse to be defeated by it. And the singer was the first person they thought of as far as a dream guest.
They asked him, after doing jail time, how he ended up “on top of the world” selling out shows as a country music superstar.
“I think the biggest thing for me was finding purpose. I don’t know, it was just like.. What I tell people when I go back to jails, because I go back to jails and speak all the time, is like, we have this misconception when you really hit a rock bottom in life, your purpose sometimes you have to be willing to let it start really small.”
“I didn’t come home obsessed with being a musician. I didn’t get out of jail like ‘I’m going to be the most famous musician ever.’ I was like ‘I just want to see my daughter.'”
Jelly Roll Says ‘I Did This’ About His Difficult Past
Jelly Roll says taking accountability for his mistakes was the real game changer that brought him to the success he’s experiencing now.
“The hardest part is having an introspective moment where you go, ‘man I did this.’ You know what I mean? That’s the hard part. It was so easy to spend so much time in jail. And dude, I blamed my neighborhood, my mother, my father, childhood trauma. And all this stuff is real, it can have a part of why you end up in jail. But what I ended up learning that I was so busy blaming everything else but me that I never took accountability. Then one day you gotta sit in the mirror and go, man, I did this. At the end of the day I put myself in this position. And I lost all that anger. It’s the first time I didn’t spiral.”
Facing up to his past decisions helped him make better choices. “Ultimate accountability saved my life,” he says.
“There’s a beautiful moment where pain can become purpose. There’s a beautiful moment where obstacles can become opportunities, messes become messages. Like these are, they’re little bitty windows when you have them, but if you grab them, they’ll change your [expletive] life.”
Jelly Roll Has a Surprising Weight Loss Goal
In the end, Jelly Roll’s ultimate weight loss goal isn’t the number on the scale.
According to Parade, Jelly’s ultimate goal is to be on the cover of Men’s Health.
“I’ve never said this out loud. I want to be on the cover of Men’s Health by March of 2026. That’s my new goal. I want to have one of the biggest transformations [ever] carrying 550 pounds. That’s insane,” he told his wife during a 2024 episode of her podcast.
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Jelly Roll’s Big Weight Loss Lesson