Jelly Roll's next weight-loss milestone isn't a number on a scale - it's 26.2 miles through the streets of New York City. The Grammy winner, who has never run a marathon before, is training to compete in the TCS New York City Marathon on November 1, and this week marks the unofficial start of serious training territory for anyone aiming at that start line.
The goal came out of a setback, not a straight line of progress. After hitting his target of a Men's Health cover in January at 265.7 pounds, Jelly Roll admitted in an April vlog that holiday indulgence and a broken collarbone had cost him 12 pounds of hard-won progress. Rather than quietly course-correct, he went public with a new target: hire a coach, train for his first marathon, and lose another 40 to 50 pounds to reach a true maintenance weight.
The training itself has been humbling. Jelly Roll has described interval workouts, 45-minute walks with a weighted vest, and a 16-mile week that left "a bone in my foot I didn't know existed" aching. He completed his first 5K back in May 2025, a distance that would have been unthinkable at his heaviest of more than 540 pounds.
What hasn't changed is the framing. Jelly Roll has consistently credited his transformation - physical and otherwise - to a rebuilt relationship with food, consistent accountability, and a faith that he's said carried him through addiction, incarceration, and now this. Running his first marathon at 41, in a city he's never raced in, for a goal he set himself very publicly, fits the pattern of a journey he's chosen to document out loud rather than polish in private.
If Jelly Roll crosses that finish line in Central Park on November 1, it will cap more than three years of a health journey that started with a walk to his mailbox.
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- Jelly Roll Confesses "I Lost My Way": What Happened After His Major Weight Loss Milestone
- From 540 Pounds to Running Mountains: Jelly Roll's Tour Is Now Built Around Faith, Fitness, and Brotherhood
