It is no secret that Jelly Roll has lost a lot of weight, and the guy is looking good these days, but what hasn’t been so clear is just how unhealthy he was before cutting those pounds.

Well, his health coach, Gary Brecka, recently shined some light on that during a recent appearance on the “Bussin’ With the Boys” podcast. Brecka, for folks who don’t know, is the same guy that the UFC’s Dana White credits with turning his health around. Brecka said that he first heard from Jelly Roll when the singer sent him a direct message and asked him, “Do you work with fat people?”

“We flew out and met him one day in LA,” Brecka said. “And we flew on his jet to Vegas. So I had do some blood work. Had him do routine testing. I did the whole lab review for him on the plane.

“I’ll never forget that flight,” Brecka added. “It was actually very sad because I could see this guy’s heart. He’s a good human, but he could barely fit in this private airplane seat. And he started talking to us describing what it was like to go through a day in the life of just being him at his weight.”

Brecka then got into a more graphic description.

“Like, he would say, ‘I have to sleep on my wide and wedge myself in with pillows and wedge myself in because if I roll on my side at night, I’ll suffocate. I’ll vomit. And, he was like, you know I never turn the radio down in the car because when I pull up to a stoplight, I can hear myself wheezing so I’ll just turn the radio on just to bury the sound of myself wheezing.”

Brecka said Jelly Roll told him that every morning he woke up, he thanked God “that he didn’t die that night.”

“Because he felt like he was going to die every night,” Brecka said. “He was in a place where he was like, ‘I’m ready to commit to changing this because God has given me this opportunity to have my music serve the world, and I feel like I’m going to die.

“He is one of the most genuine human beings, and to see that transition right there, is just amazing, man.”

At his last update this summer, Jelly Roll, who once weighed more than 500 pounds, said he lost more than 180 pounds.

Brian Linder is the trending editor and the retail, restaurant and real estate editor at PennLive.com. He has more than 20 years of experience working for newspapers first in South Carolina, then Daytona…