Jelly Roll drops nearly 200 pounds, sets sights on sky-high goal

Fox News

10-04-2025

Jelly Roll is breezing through his weight-loss goals and celebrating his latest milestone.
During the "Big Night Aht" live show Wednesday, he told host Pat McAfee and the gathered audience that he's lost nearly 200 pounds.
"I started at 540 pounds and I was 357 pounds this morning," the 40-year-old said, adding, "I'm gonna lose another 100 pounds and go skydiving with my wife in Sweden, baby!"
Earlier this year, Jelly Roll celebrated not only the lower number on the scale but an improvement in his overall fitness.
In February, he told E! News at a pre-Super Bowl party that he "hiked a mountain the other day. Camelback," referring to the Arizona mountains.
"There is no way that would have been possible beforehand, so it's great to see that progress, and we still are going," the singer, born Jason Bradley DeFord, said.
The "Son of a Sinner" singer has been on a weight-loss journey since December 2022 and has seen incredible success, but admitted it hasn't always been easy.
"It isn't always the case where I feel focused or positive," he admitted to E! News. "The things that motivate me and keep me going are the people I have met along the way... The people that come up to me and bravely share their sobriety date, or a story of something that they've dealt with, or someone they've lost."
He added, "Seeing the resilience of the human spirit, there is no greater motivation than to keep going."
In December 2024, he spoke on his wife Bunnie Xo's "Dumb Blonde" podcast about why he decided to be open with his fans about losing weight.
"I did this publicly for a reason," he said. "I want to be honest about my struggles with it with people. I wore it for so long."
Jelly Roll continued, "I think that people that become as big as I became, when they lose the weight, they're kind of ashamed. 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."
"I wanted to lose it in front of everybody. I wanted to talk about it… This is constantly what I'm putting in the air because I want to bring people along with me."
He later told Bunnie, "I wanna be on the cover of 'Men's Health' by March of 2026. That's my new goal. So I wanna have one of the biggest transformations."