Although he’s spoken at length about being “petrified” of losing his momentum in the industry, country music sensation Jelly Roll says it won’t be his weight that dictates the amount of success he has in the future.
The Nashville, Tennessee, native, who recently embarked on a public weight-loss journey, says he’s confident that his willingness to be open about dropping pounds won’t shed him of his fame.
“I did this publicly for a reason,” he told wife Bunnie Xo, on her “Dumb Blonde” podcast, released Monday. “I want to be honest about my struggles with it with people. I wore it for so long.”
JELLY ROLL LOST OVER 100 POUNDS WHILE FIGHTING FOOD ADDICTION BATTLE
Jelly Roll is pictured in June 2023, left, and November 2024. (Getty Images)
“I think that people that become as big as I became, when they lose the weight, they’re kind of ashamed,” explained the “Save Me” singer, who has lost 100 pounds. “They’re so ashamed that they go and hide and lose the weight, and then they come back out, and they don’t really know how to interact with the world, looking different or feeling different, you know? And they kind of got to find their whole new way.”
Jelly Roll, who was born Jason Bradley DeFord, says he took the opposite approach. “I wanted to lose it in front of everybody. I wanted to talk about it,” adding that it’s a regular topic of conversation in his daily vlogs he records.
Jelly Roll says he chose to include the public on his weight-loss journey. (Scott Legato/Getty Images)
“This is constantly what I’m putting in the air because I want to bring people along with me.”
To further his point, Jelly Roll brought up a previous conversation with his wife. “One night you said something to the effect of, ‘Are you worried about the ’fat effect’? And that most Hollywood stars who have lost a large amount of weight ended up not getting placed in their career.”
Jelly Roll was a guest on his wife Bunnie XO’s podcast, “Dumb Blonde.” (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images)
“What I want the world to know, and 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,” Jelly Roll said definitively. “I somehow managed to be this successful with carrying 550 pounds. That’s insane.”
Jelly Roll believes his struggle with food surpasses unhealthy habits. “I used to feel like it was such an injustice to real addicts to call food something you could be addicted to. You know, cause I’ve seen people fight for their life on heroin,” the former incarcerated singer shared.
“I didn’t become successful because of my weight, I became successful in spite of it.”
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Jelly Roll believes that in losing weight, he is confronting his addiction to food. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
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“But, I’ve seen people fight for their life in their own body. You know what I mean? And I started realizing that the same patterns that I had… toward drugs or alcohol at different times of my life, was small compared to the consistent bad pattern I’d had with food.”
On his horizon, Jelly Roll has set a new goal for himself: being a cover model. “I wanna be on the cover of ‘Men’s Health’ by March of 2026,” he told his wife, who shared in his excitement. “That’s my new goal. So I wanna have one of the biggest transformations.”
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