"The weight came on about four years ago. I've toured for over 12 years, and for the first two records I was doing tons of shows all the time. And for those two records I was addicted to cocaine, OxyContin and alcohol. The coke and the Oxy kept my weight down, but for the third album I quit the opiates and started to crave sugar. I was still drinking a lot of alcohol and started to pack on the pounds."
In 2009 an appearence on The Today show where Kathy Lee Gifford confused him with Meatloaf made him decide to lose the weight."It really stung. I'm a fan of Meat Loaf, but she wasn't talking about a musical comparison. It was national television, and my heart kind of fell on the ground. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to Meat Loaf at all because I'm a fan. But here I am barely 30 years old and that's the one thing that she says. It was like the performance didn't even matter."
Shinedown lead singer recently did 5 questions with the LA times where he really opened up about his weight gain.
