Jelly Roll explained why he didn’t use GLP-1 before losing nearly 300 pounds on his weight loss journey. “I remember everyone telling me on GLP-1 or taking Ozempic or Mounjaro, ‘Listen, your stomach is going to hurt a little bit,'” Jelly Roll, 41, said in a new Men’s Health profile published Friday, Jan. 2. “I treated my body so badly, I can’t believe I gave myself this voice for so long. It wasn’t out of fear.” Eventually, the musician worked with a therapist to treat his “addiction” to food. “Right before I started getting my blood work done, I went to and received mental health therapy about overeating. I started treating my food addiction for what it was: an addiction. Why did I treat cocaine the way I did? I went to cocaine meetings and found a sponsor and got through rehab and cheated and went through life-changing emotional choices. “I didn’t look at food addiction any differently. Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started to change everything for me.” Jelly Roll’s weight loss transformation over the years: See photos Jelly Roll eventually went from 540 pounds to 265 pounds. “I feel like a teenager, dog,” he joked. “I have the sex drive of a 17-year-old again. I’m going all over my wife. We’re having daytime sex again. It’s damn great.” FilmMagic; Getty Images He continued: “[Before the weight loss] my testosterone level – and I’m cool to talk about it openly – was that of a pre-teen boy. When I went in there for the test, it was bad. River. The world opened up when I [saw] it’s on paper. I said, “Is this my testosterone level?” I mean, man, we’re talking about a 57. You can’t wake up without a T. I was married to a smoke show and still struggling. The first two blood panels were like, “How are you living?” Jelly Roll, who has been married to Bunnie XO since 2016, called it “fighting a weight.” I was a prisoner of my own body. Man, wiping ass was a problem. Washing myself properly was a problem. Getting into cars. Every decision I made in life had to be based on my weight,” he recalled. “Whether it could hold me, make it easier or fit me — people don’t think about every aspect of, ‘I still want to be able to do this and I can’t.’ I was so inspired by things like that.” Men’s Health Jelly Roll revealed how his size affected every aspect of his life, saying: “I was so fat that there came a point in my life where my wife and I had to put two queen beds next to each other because we couldn’t fit in a king bed anymore, I was all over the place. It’s almost to the point where I look back now and I can’t believe that I was able to sing and that I was on national television and that I was on stage doing 100 shows a year.” He continued: “I killed myself, literally. I mean, I was eating myself to absolute death. I can’t talk about one area of my life that it didn’t affect. It’s as disgusting as you can imagine, when I really look back on it. I was trying to wipe my ass. You know what I mean? I’m ashamed of it. When I think about it, I feel ashamed again. And the shame is just the same thing that will send me right back to the pantry. It’s the same thing that sends an alcoholic back to the bar.” After shedding nearly 300 pounds, Jelly Roll remains committed to his health journey. Weight loss and celebrity transformations: before and after pictures “I don’t have a target weight, I have a feeling weight and I don’t feel it yet. I’ll know when I feel it, because I’ll finally be there. But man, I’ve been working really hard and losing weight the right way,” he said. “I feel the weight loss in every way. Whether it’s basketball and how I dribble and move, or how I can breathe running up and down the court. I feel when I sleep and my hip hurts less and I can roll over more easily without making a loud thud. Or the fact that my wife and I can fit in the same bed again.” The musician admitted that losing weight has also “dramatically” changed his marriage. “It’s completely different now. I follow her around the house,” he remarked. “I’m like a teenager again! I’m like the Pink Panther — I’m coming out of every corner. And she opens the closet and I’m like, ‘Hi!'” There were some unexpected side effects, though. “There’s so much skin under here. I’m starting to meet with skin surgeons to talk about possibly cutting the skin off in the next year,” Jelly Roll said. “It’s probably the weirdest relationship I have with it. It’s like, I’m proud of it because I won it.” He concluded, “It’s a symbol of a war I’ve had with myself. But equally, it’s in a hell of a way. So, you look in the mirror, like, if it wasn’t there, man, I’d be on fire. So, [I’ll] they probably have to cut these breasts off eventually.”
