“I’ve always said that I believe obesity is directly connected to mental health,” Jelly Roll noted. “I know how easy it is for people to go, ‘Just quit eatin’ so much, just work out, it’s so easy!’ I wish I looked at food that way. But I understand it from the perspective of an addict because I know what addiction is.”

And he’s had to adjust his life to the realities of the road accordingly.

“It took years to be able to be around people doing cocaine and just not be doing it, just to know it’s happening in my environment and be okay with that,” Jelly Roll continued. “I’m having to take that same approach with food, to be honest, and I’m not ashamed to say it, that I’m having to make those dramatic decisions where I’m like, ‘I don’t need nothing to eat in my green room!’ I need to change my entire relationship with how I look at food.”

Still prone to bouts of self-loathing, he said he sometimes scares himself, calling the “shame spiral” the “monster in front of me all the time.”

But, Jelly Roll added, “I’ve got a good support system around me and I will say that all that cliché stuff is real. When they’re like, ‘Go walk out in the sun and drink water,’ you hear it and [it’s like], ‘It’s not that easy, it’s hard!’ Then I started walking around in the sun and drinking water. I’m like, ‘Dude, I feel so much better!'”

To complement Jelly Roll’s candor, see what more stars have had to say about their weight loss journeys: