Jelly Roll is getting real about his weight loss journey, revealing he’s lost over 275 pounds in five years without using GLP-1 medication. The 41-year-old genre-bending superstar says he’s completely transformed his life and health and now feels like a whole new person living in a “dramatically different world,” weighing 265 pounds.
Five years ago, in 2020, Jelly Roll weighed 540 pounds. Today, he’s lost 275 pounds and counting, marking a major transformation in his life and health, which he will continue to do into the New Year. Jelly Roll, whose real name is Jason DeFord, opened up about his health, weight loss and fitness journey in the new Men’s Health Winter 2026 Cover Story.
After fans noticed Jelly Roll’s dramatic weight loss, internet and social media trolls quickly accused the father of two of using GLP-1 medications like Ozempic. However, that’s not the case. While Jelly Roll says he has nothing against those medications, he wants people to know he worked hard to lose the weight through healthier lifestyle changes and improved eating habits.
According to a Men’s Health editor’s note, Jelly Roll did “very briefly try weight-loss meds very early on his journey, but stopped after two weeks” of use due to his acid reflux. His method and focus was on the food he ate and changing what he ate with the help of his chef and nutritionist, Ian Larios.
“He said, ‘When I do this, I don’t want an asterisk next to my name, bubba,’” Brigham Buhler, Ways2Well founder, said of Jelly Roll’s commitment to losing weight without a GLP-1’s assistance. “I want to show people that this is possible.”
“Food, food, food, food, food,” Jelly Roll said when he was asked what did he do to lose the weight. He admitted that he had a food addiction and would eat anything and everything whenever he wanted, including frequent visits to Waffle House.
In 2020, at his highest weight of 540 pounds, he knew it was time for a change as his scale wouldn’t even calibrate to his weight as it stopped at 520. “The needle went past 520, but it didn’t blow it down,” he continued to tell Men’s Health. “And I would play with it—I would teeter the foot up, like, how low could I get it? I was mad optimistic. So it could have been 560, it could have been 528.”
He began his journey by working with a therapist to address his food addiction, just as he previously did with his drug addictions. “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 shit myself and went through real hard life-changing emotional choices to get off cocaine and codeine,” Jelly Roll stated. “I didn’t look at the food addiction different. Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started changing everything for me. When I started really looking at the source of why I was eating. What was I eating for?”
He started working towards a healthier lifestyle in 2021 with the founder of The Ultimate Human, Gary Brecka, to attempt to get below 500 pounds. “I was so fat that I took that weekend and I fasted and just ate a couple of chicken noodle soups. When I came in under 500, I was like, ‘I’m finally under 500 pounds!’ But I was privately thinking, Dude, fuck, I’m sending a grown man a picture of me on the scale at almost 500 pounds,” he said.
Then he started to work with Texas-based wellness clinic, Ways2Well, where they did blood work. The blood work panels revealed “super high” insulin levels and several other things. “The first couple of blood panels were like, ‘how are you alive?’” Jelly Roll revealed in the tell-all interview about his health journey. In addition to his high insulin levels, his blood panels also revealed that his cholesterol was high and his A1C was extremely high too.
According to nurse practitioner, Danese Rexroad, who treated the Nashville native at Ways2Well, “super high” insulin levels can make weight loss more difficult and prolong the journey, which is why correcting that, and other blood panel issues, was her first priority. “You’ll see heavy guys struggling for a long time in the early part because they’re not fast enough to strike that insulin down. And it takes so long to do it,” Rexroad shared in a statement.
Rexroad continued, “Insulin is designed to help glucose enter the cell. 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 Ways2Well nurse practitioner prescribed Jelly Roll metformin, a drug commonly used for Type 2 Diabetes, to help lower his triglyceride levels and support the body’s natural process of eliminating old or damaged cells. That wasn’t the only thing he needed to fix, in fact, he also had the Testosterone of a pre-teen boy.
“My testosterone level—and I’m cool to talk about this openly—was of a pre-teen boy,” he explained. “When I went in there for the test, it was bad. Bad. The world opened up when I seen it on paper. I was like, That’s my testosterone level? I mean, dude, we’re talking a 57.” According to WebMD, normal Testosterone levels for a man Jelly Roll’s age are around 300 ng/dL and go up to 900.
To address the issue, he started hormone therapy, which also gave him the opportunity to learn more about his vital organs and blood health. “That was a big part of my journey: wanting to know what’s happening within me,” he added.
Men’s Health documented Jelly Roll’s journey and released a new documentary, titled A Year For A Life, which is available to watch now.
“It was never-ending sadness,” Jelly Roll shared. “And anger. I was a prisoner to my own body. Dude, wiping my ass was a problem. Washing myself properly was a problem. Getting in cars. Every decision I made in life had to be based on my weight. If it could hold me, facilitate me, or fit me—people don’t think about every facet of ‘I still want to be able to do that, and I can’t.’ I was so inspired by that kind of stuff.”
As he enters into 2026, and looking ahead to the future, Jelly Roll plans to get his loose skin removed as he continues his weight loss and fitness journey. He revealed that information to the outlet after flexing for them and showing his bicep, which is now visible as they are more defined from his workout routine.
“These shoulders are mine. Meaning, they’re only gonna get bigger. There’s no more fat to lose in them. They were gone. I had never seen them,” the singer/songwriter added.
He also wants to become other’s motivation to lose weight and hopes his story will inspire others. “A lot of dudes get to their bottom dollar, and we’re like, ‘I’m changing! Tomorrow in the morning when I wake up, I’m a different person!’ We attack it all at once. ‘I’m gonna run! I’m gonna lift! I’m gonna eat right. I’m gonna do this and this and this.’ Listen, man, because I’ve done this before: Just pick one of those. And you know which one you need to pick? Food. Start there. Fuck everything else. Just commit yourself to ‘I’m gonna count every calorie and macro that goes in my mouth.’ ”
