Jelly Roll’s weight loss journey
- Jelly Roll has lost 183 pounds since making lifestyle changes.
- He trained for and completed a 5K race in 2024.
- He’s working on his relationship with food and addressing his food addiction while opting for healthy alternatives to his favorite dishes.
Jelly Roll is setting new goals as he continues his weight loss journey and shares details about his progress.
The singer revealed he’s lost almost 200 pounds thanks to a few lifestyle changes. He’s embraced a healthier diet — one that prioritizes nutrition and involves less alcohol. And he also began exercising more, particularly during his most recent tour Beautifully Broken, which ran from August to November 2024.
Now, he’s looking ahead to new feats including new weight loss goals, landing magazine covers and sports he’s never been able to try before.
Jelly Roll began his weight loss journey by setting small achievable goals and continuously meeting them. Since then, he’s stayed motivated.
Ahead, discover everything Jelly Roll has shared about his recent weight loss and his upcoming goals.
How did Jelly Roll lose weight?
Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason DeFord, kickstarted his weight loss by running.
He stunned viewers of the Academy of Country Music Awards in May 2024 when he looked noticeably slimmer on the red carpet. The appearance came just a few weeks after he ran his first 5K race in recent years (and perhaps ever) — the 2 Bears 5K in Los Angeles.
Reflecting on completing the 3.1-mile run, he said it was “really emotional” because he “couldn’t walk a mile” in January when he started training for the 5K.
“So the fact that we got three point whatever it was done today, I feel really, really good about it. I left here feeling really motivated,” he added.
Training for the 5K race has been a big part of helping Jelly Roll lose weight. After finishing the 2 Bears race, he told Entertainment Tonight that he’d lost “50 to 70-something pounds. I got to double check again — it was a lot of weight.”
In mid-April, while he was still training, he told People that he was “doing 2 to 3 miles a day, 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.”
“I’ve been really kicking a–, man,” he added. “I’m probably down 70-something pounds.”
“I feel really good,” he continued. “I was thinking, I plan on losing another 100, 100-and-something (pounds). If I feel this good down this weight, man, I can only imagine what I’m going to feel like by the time I go on tour.”
In a November 2024 interview with People, he shared that part of his weight loss success has also involved overcoming food addiction.
“The battle was with the food addiction, changing the way I’ve looked at food for the last 39 years,” he said. “I’ve never had a healthy relationship with food, so that was the hard part. But once you get into that discipline and commitment, it’s like an avalanche. Once that little snowball started rolling, it was on its way.”
When Jimmy Kimmel asked Jelly Roll how he’s losing the weight in April 2025, the singer revealed that his weight loss strategy is uncool. “I’ve been thinking of ways to make it sound cool, but I can’t,” he said. “I’m eating a lot of protein, vegetables and walking. That’s what I’m doing.”
He admits, however, that he still struggles sometimes. At the 2025 Academy of Country Music Awards, when asked about the hardest part of losing weight, he told Fox News Digital it was the food.
“If you’re really battling obesity, you got to start at the dinner table, man. The walking’s great, all the other stuff’s great, but you got to fight that addiction at the dinner table,” he said.
He revealed he’d lost nearly 200 pounds in April 2025
Jelly Roll shared he’d reached a new low on the scale while speaking with Pat McAfee during his Big Night Aht live show on April 9.
“I started at 540 pounds and I was 357 pounds this morning,” Jelly Roll said. This near-200-pound weight loss is a new feat for the singer and comes only five months after he announced he’d lost 120 pounds in Nov. 2024.
As usual, the singer announced a new goal for himself following this scale victory. The latest? “I’m gonna lose another 100 pounds and go skydiving with my wife in Sweden, baby,” Jelly Roll said.
When Jelly Roll began losing weight, he credited his hard work during his tour. “I’ve been kicking a– on this tour. I brought out a nutritionist, Ian Larios … And he’s been really helping me. We’ve been shooting basketball. We’ve been walking. We’ve been working.
“… 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. Yeah, dude. We’re living, man. It’s cool,” he added at the time.
A few weeks before, Larios shared a video update on Instagram on Oct. 22, 2024, to celebrate the fact that Jerry Roll had lost more than 100 pounds at that point.
“You won’t recognize me,” Jelly Roll says in the video.
He’s made sensible food swaps
Larios also shared some cooking tips that allowed Jelly Roll to eat sensibly while on the road.
Larios had been swapping out some of Jelly Roll’s favorite meals for some healthier options while the artist stayed on top of his workouts. “He’s been walking the arenas, playing basketball, boxing,” Larios shared. “He’s just surpassed a 100-pound weight loss.”
Before a show, Larios prepared a banana bowl for Jelly Roll made with sliced bananas, Manuka honey and some Stevia-sweetened dark chocolate grated over the top.
Once the singer was off stage, Larios said he leaned into high-protein meals. In the video, he made the singer a play on Nashville hot chicken without the oil and batter. Larios’ version is air-fried and seasoned with potato and rice flour. The french fries he served on the side were boiled in bone broth for additional protein.
Jelly Roll’s weight struggles
Jelly Roll has opened up in the past about living with obesity and addiction.
In a 2018 Instagram post, he shared that he once weighed over 500 pounds, calling the day he realized this “one of the most embarrassing” of his life.
“I’ve been obese since I was a small child . 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,” he wrote.
In the same post, he shared that in 2016 he lost 200 pounds but then began overeating again in 2018 and gained 60 back. “Earlier this year I began over eating and over drinking again,” the caption reads. “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.”
At the time, he said he was recommitting to living a healthier lifestyle.
For years, he said women were a major source of validation for him when he felt lowest about his body. “I was so insecure in my body for so many years that I found validation through women,” he said on a 2024 episode of the “On Purpose With Jay Shetty” podcast. “I thought if I could pull pretty women, then I wasn’t fat.”
But he found the motivation to make a change. In February 2023, he posted on X that he was “working out daily… praying and meditating …. Eating better — losing weight. 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.”
Even though he met major milestones including weight loss goals and running a 5K, Jelly Roll isn’t stopping there.
“Next year, half marathon. We’re saying it right now,” he told ET in 2024. “I’m going to speak for them — we’re gonna do the 2 Bears 5k again, but we’re going to do a half-marathon before.”
On Feb. 7, 2025, he revealed another feat he completed in Arizona. “I hiked a mountain the other day. Camelback,” he said during an E! News interview. “There is no way that would have been possible beforehand, so it’s great to see that progress and we still are going.”
Jelly Roll’s weight loss goals
He wanted to lose 100 pounds
Jelly Roll’s first goal was to lose 100 pounds, now that he’s met (and surpassed) that goal in 2024, he’s on to the next.
He wants to be on the cover of Men’s Health
As a guest on wife Bunnie XO’s “Dumb Blonde” podcast, Jelly Roll said his next goal is to be on the cover of Men’s Health. And he revealed it on air so that people could follow his progress.
“I did this publicly for a reason,” he said. “I want to be honest about my struggles with it with people. I wore it for so long. I think that people that become as big as I became, when they lose the weight, they’re kind of ashamed. They’re so ashamed that they go out and lose the weight and they come back out and they don’t really know how to interact with the world looking different or feeling different.”
He reflected on some of the other ways he’s been candid about his weight loss progress and he has no intention of scaling back. “I wanted to lose it in front of everybody. I want to talk about it. It’s on my daily Roll vlogs. You know what I mean? I mean this is constantly what I’m putting in the air because I want to bring people along with me.”
“And what I want the world to know and what I want the people to see, Bunnie, is that I didn’t become successful because of my weight. I became successful in spite of it. I somehow managed to be this successful with carrying 550 pounds. That’s insane.”
He wants to weigh less than 250 pounds
During an April 2025 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live Jelly Roll revealed his weight goal was to be under 250 pounds.
“To do all the fun stuff in life, you’ve gotta be under 250,” he explained. The fun stuff, he shared are activities he’s never been able to participate in including sky diving, riding a rollercoaster, riding a bull and wrestling an alligator.
“I’ve got a list of things I want to do,” he added.
