Jelly Roll is setting the record straight on his weight loss, and exactly how it came to be.
The “I Am Not Okay” singer has been publicly candid about his weight loss effort, keeping fans up to date on progress and most recently confirming he has lost close to 300 pounds.
However, while many may have assumed that the rapper might have relied on a GLP-1 such as Ozempic or Wegovy — which many celebrities have been candid about using — to lose weight, he’s maintaining that the diabetes and weight loss drug is not his cup of tea.
Speaking with Men’s Health, Jelly recalled how “everyone” was telling him about GLP-1s at a time, and they would note: “Listen, it’s gonna hurt your stomach a little bit.”
Jelly, who has spoken openly about his past drug abuse and health issues, then explained: “I’ve treated my body so bad, I can’t believe God’s gave me this voice for this long. I didn’t deserve it,” revealing that he “didn’t do” the drug “out of fear.”
He shared that instead, in addition to a diet and exercise routine, he relied on the help of a therapist to tackle his food addiction.
© Getty Images“Even before I got into getting my blood work done, I went and got mental health therapy about my overeating,” he shared. “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 [expletive] myself and went through real hard life-changing emotional choices to get off cocaine and codeine.”
Jelly emphasized: “I didn’t look at the food addiction [differently]. Once I started treating food like an addiction, it started changing everything for me.”
Also addressing the “never-ending sadness” and “anger” that came with his weight — he has so far gone from weighing 540 pounds to 265 — Jelly recalled: “I was a prisoner to my own body. Dude, wiping my ass was a problem. Washing myself properly was a problem. Getting in cars. Every decision I made in life had to be based on my weight.”
“I was so fat that there came a moment in life that my wife and I had to put two queen beds beside each other because we couldn’t fit in a king bed anymore, I was just all over. It’s almost to the point where I look back now and I can’t believe that I was able to perform, that I was on national television, and that I was on stages and doing 100-something shows a year,” he went on.
© Billboard via Getty Images“I was killing myself, literally. I mean, I was eating myself to absolute death. I can’t talk about one area of my life it was not affecting,” he added. “It’s as disgusting as you imagine, when I really look back at it. I was struggling to wipe my ass. You know what I mean? Like, I’m ashamed of it. When I think of it being disgusting, I feel shame again. And shame is the exact same thing that will send me right back into the pantry. It’s the same thing that sends an alcoholic right back to the bar.”
Jelly, born Jason Bradley DeFord in Antioch, Tennessee, has been married to podcaster Bunnie Xo since 2016, and the pair are parents to Bailee Ann, 17, and Noah, nine, born out of two separate, previous relationships of Jelly.
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