Presto!: How I Made over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales

Penn... what a lovable goofball. I listen to his podcast, I've read all his books (which are essentially more detailed versions of stories he most likely already talked about on his podcast), watch all his movies and tv shows I can find, and I've attended the Penn and Teller show half a dozen times in Vegas and on tour.But if you ask if I am a "fan" of his... I don't feel like I am. More appropriately, I feel like he is simply my friend. He is so uninhibited with his stories from his personal life, his ideas, his beliefs, etc, that the wall that normally separates strangers simply dissolves. He becomes part of your life when he speaks to you.Penn never asks that you agree with him (his opinions are strong, and you will certainly not agree with all of them). He never demands your respect, he never tries to impress you with his fame and fortune. He never boasts about the privileged experiences he has had the opportunity to be part of.Penn is actually amazingly humble, down-to-earth, and reasonable. He simply is telling you about his life, his impressions, and what he learned. Telling you his stories like he would talk to a friend. And that's what you feel like when you read his books.I often tell others of some of the stories and life-lessons that I've learned from Penn's experience, because his tales are very memorable and relatable. I am surprised when I get so many negative reactions from others when I mention his name. Inevitably, the person with whom I am speaking heard one of Penn's opinions they didn't agree with, and have since written him off entirely. I think this is incredibly myopic, and feel that anyone would find wisdom in Penn's tales if they took the time to listen before passing judgement. Just because you may not agree with 100% of everything a person says doesn't mean you can't enjoy their stories.This book is (mainly) about Penn's potato diet. He mentions repeatedly to NOT use this book as dietary advice, because Penn readily admits he does not know enough about nutrition to offer such advice. Nonetheless, since he's the one talking, I took it upon myself to try his routine, and I lost 50 lbs! No, I'm not joking. I found it a diet difficult to stay on in the real world, when you don't have a regular routine, so I've since gained some of that weight back. But now I know that the problem IS SOLVABLE! I'm not afraid to gain a little weight back, because I know it is FIXABLE. Living without fear of inescapable weight gain is liberating. If that's not worth the price of the book (and then another book written by an actual dietician), I don't know what to tell you. But you probably wouldn't be bothered to actually study up on nutrition if you didn't just read Penn's inspirational story first.So, if you enjoy humor, lots of completely inappropriate segues into unrelated rantings, and other goofiness from a genuinely warm and funny guy, give this book a try. Then simply TRY to not bring Penn's name up in conversation afterwards, because you will unerringly fail.

If I had to pick the last person on the planet I'd expect to hear "apple cider with the mother" it would be Penn Jillette. This book is not easy to put down. Penn is very funny and about as honest a person as can be. The idea of having your weight gain creep up to going from being a big guy who liked to eat to medically obese to losing 100 pounds and looking really hot is a lot to wrap one's brain around. But the trip he relates includes blood pressure so high it was "like bees buzzing in his head" to being watched in a hospital to protect against him "stroking out." If he didn't lose weight, he'd die. He faced a lifetime of being on the kind of medications that cause all sorts of other serious health problems. Another great option was having a sleeve surgically put into his stomach. I had a friend whose boyfriend got one of those. Hadn't seen her in a while and when I did and asked how he was -- "Dead."So there are a lot of critics who assail what follows, which is Penn taking the advice of a NASA scientist called Ray Cronise, who put together some ideas about metabolism that include changing diet and lifestyle habits. The story is funny, and riveting, and smart. What he does works. Penn is a great storyteller and takes you along for the ride of what it's like to lose 100 pounds and keep working while he does. The food is different. His brain works at a different speed when he's on stage. His doctors change his medications because his system is changing so fast. What he does is show this can be done. He even takes on reporters and naysayers who say that only wealthy entertainer types can do this, laying out the more than affordable cost of his new healthy diet and pointing out you can get the New York Times seven minute exercise routine online. What he has to say about American health lifestyles is thought provoking and will sound familiar. Why do we giant muffins at office meetings before lunch???It's also a story about a creative talented man who loves his kids and wife and wants to stick around to be with them. It's about friendship. This book is a service underneath how great it is. I'm married to a guy who told me he wasn't eating that much sugar as I said up till the day he had a massive heart attack and got lucky enough to have a doctor who hit him 19 times with paddles under his heart started again. (They usually quit around 8 times.) Then we started doing a lot of the stuff in this book. Penn Jillette will save some lives with "Presto."

As a long time fan of Jillette, I saw Penn & Teller off-Broadway, I can say this was up to par. I loved it. I gifted it to two friends who also enjoyed it - one of who has lost a lot of weight.The book has lots of comical moments and insights into the habits we form around food.

Además de proporcionar información importante sobre temas de nutrición y salud, lo hace con un gran sentido del humor. Lo recomiendo ampliamente.

An interview with Penn that I saw on YouTube got me interested in this book but as I read through, I found that Penn had landed on eating the kind of diet I had previously found through my own research to be the diet I believe to be the best for me.I have eaten that way in the past and lost up to 4 stone but so much interjection from life and other people’s points of view always kicked my confidence in what I was eating. It’s easy to worry in that way when you are eating differently from everyone else, and they question you at social events.At those times, all I had was my own research and guess work, but no others around me to back me up, or to confirm that they were doing it too. In those times, it can feel easier and sometimes more safe to just go back to how everyone else eats and ignore how fat you are and how unhealthy you are. I guess it’s tough to have faith in your own plan when everyone around you is telling it is wrong.But having read this book, I now see that Penn and all his Cronut buddies are all eating the way I want to eat, and they have given me the confidence to try all over again at losing weight and being healthy, and more importantly the confidence to do that in a way that is not deemed “normal” by most people.It’s Friday morning now as I write this. I started reading this book on Monday of this week, and I also started back on my healthy diet very shortly after I began reading, with Penn as my confidence and encouragement.In those four and a bit days I have lost 5.3 pounds (2.4 kg).Please note that this book is not about eating only potatoes, it is about a journey from craving meat, fat, salt, sugar and general crap unhealthy food, to eating only the greatest healthiest food; food that is SO right to eat, that even if you eat as much as you want of that food every day, you still don’t get fat and you still don’t get unhealthy. Food that tends TOWARD health, sounds like a crazy notion, but OF COURSE that is how food should be, we have just been steered so far off track throughout our lives that most of us don’t know how to get back, or perhaps don’t even know we need to be steered back on track.That is why this book is so good. Penn’s journey re-orients you in good, logical truth about food and nutrition and lifestyle.I must also say, Penn is really funny and entertaining, has a really nice outlook on life and would have written a great book regardless of the subject matter. The fact that the subject is so important, so interesting, and will make such a good impact on your life is a huge bonus.

As odd as it may sound, this book was hilariously, laugh outloud funny. Apart from the humour, it gives a good insight into how this person, after a serious health scare, decided to follow a plant based diet.

The forward in this book is pretty honest: "don't do this." I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I like Penn's energy and the humility in which he tells his story. This isn't a "how to" book but there's a lot of inspiration in his now-or-never approach to lifestyle changes. Fun read.