#MushroomMakeover - Week Four and Final Recap!

This post is one of several as part of the Mushroom Council's 30-day weight loss challenge called the #MushroomMakeover. I am being financially compensated for my participation as an ambassador for this program but the opinions and anecdotes posted are my own.

This is it - the final post. How quickly the Mushroom Makeover challenge has gone by! I am so honored to have been part of this great group of bloggers who were participating and to also have been a participant in a live Google Hangout session about mushrooms. If you haven't seen the past posts, I have just finished this Mushroom Makeover challenge held by the Mushroom Council and Mamavation where I replaced mushrooms for meat (or just make mushroom-centric dishes) four times a week in addition to followed some dietary guidelines and a defined workout schedule. Last week I didn't lose any weight but this week, I dropped off 1.2 lbs. While the total amount for the past 30 days might not seem impressive (2.6 absolute loss), I know that the progress has been much more impressive on my health. It is a definite truth that mushrooms are great fillers with less the calories than meat.

In addition to my weight in pounds, I was also asked to measure myself progress at specific areas. I had some interesting changes between Day One and the end date. As aforementioned, 2.6 pounds were lost but I would suspect more has been. It is very possible that doing all of my workouts has built out muscles and therefore made little progress on what is lost, numerically. I lost 2" off of my waist but gained .5" on both my hips and thighs (leg workouts and muscle growing?). I also managed somehow to lose about 2.5" from my chest! Throughout the journey though, the weight loss was secondary to getting my health back on track. With help from Corinne Dobbas, our dietitian during this program, and Mark Segedie, our physical trainer, I think I have done a good job kickstarting myself back to a healthier me. This week's meals involved some help from others in the family as they wanted to get in on the mushroom action - check the photos after the jump:


After driving up from San Diego back to Orange County after a three-day conference, I was pleasantly surprised by something Duc had been laboring over while I was away - Mushroom Stroganoff. Using vegetable pasta and replacing the beef completely with mushrooms certainly gave into a nostalgia and feel-good comfort food experience!


Some days you just need to go simple, and when Duc picked off the first harvest of his arugula, I knew that I would need to make something spicy to complement it. That arugula, hydroponically grown, was very potent in scent and flavor so in this Mushroom Arugula Quinoa, everything was bold, peppery, and nutty:

• Cook one cup of tricolor quinoa in two cups of water; they're done when the little "tails" pop out.
• Saute 8 oz of sliced white mushrooms with 2 cloves of garlic and olive oil.
• Add in 1 tsp whole peppercorns to infuse flavor into oil.
• Wilt 1 cup arugula in same pan as mushrooms (about 1 minute).
• Mix everything together!

It almost feels like crowdsourcing week because over the weekend, my mother made this Vegetarian Curry to pour over some rice noodles. Rich and creamy, this really had no need for anything meaty - the mushrooms and taro took great care of that part!


Then to appease Duc's constant asking for another pureed soup, I whipped together a tasty Roasted Cauliflower Shiitake Soup made with beautiful Shiitakes we found at the farmers' market. These beauts gave such a signature taste to the whole dish which used plenty of cauliflower and leeks to add a sweet, roasted flavor to it all. I loved this one even if it doesn't photograph well, hah!

So there you have it - mushrooms for a month and I don't see why I would stop having them! The workouts have been great and have taught me that I really do need a dedicated "program" to keep me on track with exercise. I think that my creativity has truly been stretched as well in terms of how to work with an ingredient - it's like a buffed up version of my Test Kitchen series! Also, let's go over the numbers again:


Not to mention, of course, how much healthier I just feel in general. Thanks to the Mushroom Council and Mamavation, and congratulations to all the bloggers involved! We'll be having a Twitter party tomorrow at 6pm PST (details here) if you want to join to talk about our progress AND to win neato prizes. Come say hi!

This post is one of several as part of the Mushroom Council's 30-day weight loss challenge called the #MushroomMakeover. I am being financially compensated for my participation as an ambassador for this program but the opinions and anecdotes posted are my own.