Jelly Roll Opens Up About His 275-Pound Weight Loss Journey on Cover of ‘Men’s Health’
The singer-songwriter discussed his ongoing fitness journey.
1/2/2026
The singer-songwriter discussed his ongoing fitness journey.
AB + DM for Men’s Health
Jelly Roll is launching 2026 with wins on multiple fronts.
In a new cover story for Men’s Health, the CMA Award winner opened up about his health journey, one that has seen the singer-songwriter shed 275 pounds over the course of five years.
Appearing on the cover of the magazine marks a major milestone for Jelly Roll, who in late 2024 made public his goal to be on the cover of Men’s Health in 2026.
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The Men’s Health piece, along with a video documentary titled “A Year For A Life,” chronicles Jelly Roll’s fitness journey. He assembled a team of trusted guides to help him in focusing on exercise (the story’s accompanying video shows Jelly Roll walking up stairs in the arenas he has played, as well as boxing and doing push-ups), eating nutritious foods and examining testosterone levels, high cholesterol levels and A1C levels.
“The first couple of blood panels were like, how are you alive?” Jelly Roll said at one point during the piece.
Jelly Roll, who has long been open about his past struggles with cocaine and alcohol, noted that the journey focused as much on mental health as physical health, as he found a therapist and also began examining his relationship to food.
“Even before I got into getting my blood work done, I went and got mental health therapy about my overeating,” Jelly Roll told Men’s Health. “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 sh-t myself and went through real hard life-changing emotional choices to get off cocaine and codeine. 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?”
Jelly Roll also gave some straightforward advice for people who try to address every factor that contributes to weight gain at once. “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. F–k everything else. Just commit yourself to ‘I’m gonna count every calorie and macro that goes in my mouth.’ ”
AB + DM for Men’s Health
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