You may know Penn Jillette as the talking member of the famous Penn & Teller magic team. (You may also know him as the creator of the excellent documentary Tim’s Vermeer. Seriously, rent and watch that film sometime.) He’s also been the larger member of the team, both in height and girth, up until now. Jillette lost over 100 pounds, nearly a pound a day, on a plant based diet. He also cut out added sugar, added salt and processed grains. As you can see from the “after” photo above and the “before” photo below, he looks like a completely different person.

View image | gettyimages.com

Even master illusionist Penn Jillette couldn’t magically make his weight disappear – but he was able to drop from 330 to 225 lbs. by making a drastic change in his eating habits.

The 6’7” entertainer decided to get healthy after his high blood pressure landed him in the hospital.

“I was on six very powerful meds to bring the blood pressure down,” Jillette, 60, tells PEOPLE. “My doctor said I needed to get my weight down, and if I brought it down 30 or 40 lbs. it would be a little easier to control. And then he said something in passing that completely blew my mind – he said, ‘If you got down to 230, you probably wouldn’t need any of the meds.’ ”

The Wizard Wars judge decided to do just that, spending December through March on an “extreme low-calorie program” in which he consumed about 1,000 calories daily and was able to lose an average of 0.9 lbs. a day.

Since reaching his goal weight on his birthday, March 5, Jillette has stopped restricting the amounts he eats, and instead follows Dr. Fuhrman’s Nutritarian diet – this means he consumes no animal products, no processed grains, and no added sugar or salt.

“I eat unbelievable amounts of food but just very, very, very healthy food,” says the magician.

His typical daily diet consists of an “enormous salad” with vinegar as dressing for lunch (he doesn’t usually eat breakfast) and a dinner consisting of 3 lbs. of greens and three servings of black or brown rice with a vegetable stew, along with lots of fruits for dessert (his favorite is “an enormous amount of blueberries with plain cocoa powder”) and vegetables with vinegar or Tabasco sauce as a snack.

“I could probably have a steak or a doughnut every couple of weeks, but I just haven’t felt like it,” says Jillette. “When you’re feeling as bad as I felt, and you go to feeling as good as I feel, the temptation to go back to doing what you were doing when you felt bad is not very great.”

Although he wasn’t exercising during his extreme weight-loss phase, he now exercises every other day, doing the “scientific 7-minute workout” along with weight lifting, juggling and 10-mile tricycle rides.

“Now it’s really fun to exercise,” he says. “The only hard part of exercise is keeping it hard enough to be hard.”

Dropping the weight has come with many more pluses than dropping 10 pant sizes (from a 44 to a soon-to-be 34).

“I have so much energy and I feel so good,” says Jillette. “I’m just plain happier.”

[From People]

Eating a plant-based diet of just 1,000 calories is no small feat for Jillette, especially considering that he runs an atheist organization called The United Church of Bacon. (I’ve considered joining that.)

After Alanis Morissette lost a lot of weight and endorsed Dr. Fuhrman’s diet, I bought his book Eat to Live. As the article from People states, it recommends a nearly vegan, almost entirely plant-based diet if possible, to quickly and safely lose weight. Many people will say that 1,000 calories a day isn’t safe, but Fuhrman makes the argument that being overweight isn’t healthy, and that it’s safe to lose weight so quickly. He claims that many formerly overweight people with diabetes can go off their medication in weeks after they go on his diet. I tried it and it wasn’t sustainable for me. I do better with counting calories and having treats, but reading the book did give me the information which led me to significantly cut back my meat consumption, (which is also better for the environment) and to eat more vegetables overall. If you’d like to learn more about Dr. Fuhrman, this trailer for a PBS special he did is a good start.

Below is a recent video of Jillette arguing against the asinine “religious freedom” laws in Arkansas and Indiana that allow business owners to discriminate. (I’m including this because I like what he says and because I couldn’t find photos of him looking thinner than this. People has a photo though.) He makes the very cogent argument that no one is being asked to endorse gay sex, they’re “being asked to sell flowers and cake to people.” A woman with helmet hair and budget highlights tries to make the argument that journalists don’t have to write articles they don’t agree with, and he quickly shuts that down. The lady from the ACLU can’t get a word in edgewise. Then the CNN journalist, Don Lemon, (can you believe he is 49?!) says that as a person of color and a gay man he has seen the same bible verses historically used against black people and interracial marriage. Every one agrees with him except for helmet hair.

Sidenote: Jillette’s 9 year-old daughter is named Moxie Crimefighter and his 8 year-old son is called Zolten. Those are their actual names.

Here is another photo of Jillette before:

View image | gettyimages.com