“That is the prettiest purple plant I’ve ever seen.”
That is what Jelly Roll said out loud nine months into cutting sugar, and that is also when he realized something major had changed. For the first time in decades, he could see color. Real color.
No, this is not a punchline. And yes, Jelly Roll swears it is true.
While sitting across from Joe Rogan on his podcast, Jelly Roll dropped the wildest twist yet in his weight loss journey. It was not just the over 200 pounds lost naturally through diet and exercise. It was not the 5K he ran or the scooter rides he can take again. It was the moment he looked at a flower and realized he was not colorblind anymore.
“Joe, I was colorblind,” he said. “I could not see—I saw shades of colors. General concepts. But like, hunter green, emerald green… green is green to me. I never realized there was nuances and prettiness.”
That is a jaw-dropper right there. Then he told the story that sealed it.
Jelly Roll was just walking through the house when something caught his eye. He turned, stunned.
“I come outside and I grab my wife, and I go, ‘Dude how long have we had that pretty purple tulip there?'”
She looked at him like he had lost his mind.
“She was like, ‘You have walked by that plant for two years, what are you talking about?'”
“I was like, ‘There is no way we have had a plant there that is that pretty for two years.'”
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That was the moment it all hit him. Not only was he changing physically, but he was also healing in ways nobody expected.
The National Eye Institute says inherited colorblindness does not go away. But if it is caused by health issues, then that is a different story. Poor circulation, high blood sugar, or nerve damage can dull vision. When you change your health, sometimes your sight gets sharper too.
For Jelly Roll, whose past diet was “all sugar and processed foods,” this was not a stretch. He has been transparent about his struggles and the toll it took. He has also been just as open about the victories.
And this one felt personal.
“I could not quit talking about it. My wife was laughing. This b**** used to give me a tie to match to go to court, and I am in there coloring. She was like, ‘What are you doing?’ I was like, ‘You want to color?’… I have got like a 300 coloring pencil set.”
The man who used to live in black t-shirts, because color didn’t matter, now has a stash of colored pencils that would make a kindergarten teacher jealous.
You could feel the joy coming off him as he told it. Like someone who didn’t know what they were missing until the world lit up.
This is not just about seeing purple. This is about Jelly Roll becoming someone he never thought he could be. He is the kind of guy who runs a 5K. The kind of guy who fits into designer clothes. The kind of guy who stops in the middle of the day to say, “Damn, that flower is beautiful.”
He did not just lose weight. He found wonder again.
Jelly Roll did not just get his life back. He got his color back.
