Jelly Roll has never been shy about sharing the ups and downs of his health journey, and his latest update is no exception.
The singer-rapper, born Jason DeFord, recently opened up about how a stretch of stress eating temporarily knocked him off track, even after reaching a major milestone earlier this year.
He announced in January that he hit his goal weight of 265 pounds, capping off an amazing transformation that has seen him lose 275 pounds over the last two years without using weight-loss medication. It’s a journey he’s documented candidly and consistently, treating his fans less like an audience and more like accountability partners along the way.
A Candid Admission
In a recent YouTube video, Jelly Roll opened up about how the hardest part of losing weight for him has been keeping his stress eating under control.
“I’ve been overeating the last three or four days, and I was feeling myself stress eat. And then what else happened was the addict in me came out,” the “Son of a Sinner” singer admitted in the video. “We had this show at this one spot that I love their catering. They have a dairy-free skillet cookie. I don’t eat nothing like that. I’m like a drug addict. You can’t eat that ’cause if I eat one, I’ll eat two. I eat four. Later that night I’m at the taco truck getting the peanut butter fluff. Next thing I know, we’re at the rest stop, and I’m looking for a chocolate bar. I’m like, ‘Damn, now I consumed 2,000 extra calories today that I didn’t even see coming.'”
“Now I gotta pay attention to it because I got–it’s like the taste of blood [to a shark]. Now it’s gonna take me a whole ‘nother week to get that back completely out of my mouth.”
“I can’t have one anything,” he continued. “My problem is it could be healthy. If you put a big bowl of strawberries in front of me and leave me alone, I will eat the entire bowl of strawberries. For sure. Or just not eat the strawberry at all. If I don’t eat it at all, I’m fine.”
Learning from Himself
“What I learned is how you do anything is how you do everything. I’m like that with alcohol. Once I realized that was my thing with food, now I just don’t eat it.”
He also opened up about how cheat meals don’t work for him. “People are like, ‘Oh, you can have one cheat meal.’ I was like ‘You can have one cheat meal. I can’t.’ ‘Cause it might be a five-day food bender for me.”
Rather than brushing the past the moment like it didn’t happen, Jelly Roll used the video to talk through how he handles setbacks like the ones he described. He said he tries to extend himself grace when he slips while also holding himself to one firm rule: never letting one bad day turn into two in a row, since he’s found the habit tends to compound the longer it’s allowed to continue.
A Musician’s Mindset Applied to Health
What stood out most in Jelly’s explanation was how he directly tied his approach to food back to his approach to music. After all, like the musician said, “How you do anything is how you do everything.”
It’s a refreshingly grounded way to talk about and process a setback. Treating it as a normal part of a long process rather than a failure that undoes months of progress shows the inner work that Jelly Roll has done alongside the weight loss work.
