Jelly Roll Wants to Be on the Cover of a Fitness Magazine: ‘New Goal’

Jelly Roll is on a mission. After losing 120 pounds in 2024, the “Son of a Sinner” singer shared his ultimate fitness goals. 

“I wanna be on the cover of Men’s Health by March of 2026,” Jelly Roll, 40, said in a preview clip of his wife’s “Dumb Blonde” podcast shared via TikTok on Sunday, December 15. “That’s my new goal. I want to have one of the biggest transformations.”

His public weight loss journey has not been an accident. He told Bunnie XO, “I did this publicly for a reason. I want to be honest about my struggles with it with people.”

“What I want the world to know and I want the people to see, Bunnie, is that I didn’t become successful because of my weight, I became successful in spite of it,” he continued. “I somehow managed to be this successful carrying 550 pounds. That’s insane.”

The singer – whose real name is Jason DeFord – has been on a weight loss journey since January, after a lifelong battle with food addiction. 

“The battle was with the food addiction, changing the way I’ve looked at food for the last 39 years,” he explained in an interview with People on November 20. “I’ve never had a healthy relationship with food, so that was the hard part. But once you get into that discipline and commitment, it’s like an avalanche. Once that little snowball started rolling, it was on its way.”

He continued, “Nobody in my house ever had [a healthy relationship with food], so that was the hard part, really fighting that demon at first and getting into that discipline and that commitment.”

Jelly’s journey began as he trained for a 5K  hosted by his comedian pals Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura. His training consisted of running up to three miles a day, four to six days a week, plus a 20 to 30 minutes session in a sauna and six minutes in a cold plunge.

Since the start of his Beautifully Broken tour in August, Jelly has dropped an estimated 60 to 70 pounds. 

After topping out at 557 pounds, the Tennessee native got serious about his fitness regimen, which now includes pickup basketball games with his tour crew, walking through the stands of the arenas and hitting the gym. 

“We’ve been playing basketball three days a week now,” he told Joe Rogan during  an October 11 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast. “I’ve never been more dialed in. I’ve never cared more about it. I’ve never been happier.”

“I feel this good just losing 100 pounds. I’m 420-something now. I’m walking around different, talking different, my shoulders are setting different, I’m moving different.”

Jelly has continued to lose weight in the months since and has no plans of slowing down. “It’s cool because there was once a time in life that the culture I built on tour was the opposite. It revolved around alcohol and drugs,” he told People. “And now our tour culture is around good eating and around exercising and doing emotional check-ins with our crew every day.”