Seven weeks and 11 pounds are behind me as we reach the eighth installment of Food Blogger vs. Fat, my journey to better health through better eating and exercise. Here’s a look at the week that was May 13 – 19.

Successes

Recently, I wrote about Graze and how healthy snacking has helped me achieve my goals.

This week, I want to talk about another subscription service that has helped both Julie and me: Home Chef.

Home Chef is meal-in-a-box delivery service similar to the more popular Blue Apron or Hello Fresh. As a subscriber, we choose our menus for the week, and on Wednesday, a box arrives with the ingredients for three full meals, including meats, sides and garnish.

We had experimented with all three aforementioned delivery services in the past and found Home Chef to have the best food – more inspired dishes that were closer to restaurant quality.

Each meal comes with a recipe card that includes illustrated instructions and nutritional information. But most importantly for me, they’re perfectly portioned for two. There’s no waste and no temptation to overindulge.

Last week’s menu was a reminder of why we love the service so much.

Our first meal was veggie sloppy Joes with sweet potato rounds. In place of ground beef, the sloppy Joe was made with button mushrooms (Georgio brand) that were mixed with shallots, walnuts, taco seasoning, crushed tomatoes, ketchup and honey.

It was served between two slices of Texas Toast and it was amazing, one of the best vegetarian meals that I have eaten at home or elsewhere. The sweet potatoes on the side were the perfect compliment. Best of all, it filled me up just as much as a “real” sloppy Joe.

Thursday night was our first repeat meal with Home Chef: chicken with basil-pecorino cream sauce and roasted vegetables.

A note on our menu card from the first time simply reads, “excellent!” And it is.

The cream sauce is incredible – a mix of heavy cream, pecorino cheese, basil pesto and butter. It serves as the bed for the chicken, which is already coated in pecorino and pesto. It’s sweet, rich and creamy, and pairs perfectly with the chicken. Of course, I sop up whatever is left with the red potato and bell pepper.

The final component of last week’s box was steak Wellington with roasted carrots and mushroom demi-glace.

Georgio mushrooms were again featured, both in the sauce and in the pastry wrap with the steak. The carrots were well-seasoned with salt, pepper and thyme. And the demi-glace was delicious, giving a salty-sweet flavor to the steak.

As far as calorie-counting, it was three meals and three victories. The meals clocked in at 652, 830 and 800 total calories, respectively. Each one fit perfectly into my daily goal of 2000 calories.

The Challenges

Monday was the rough day. As I mentioned in last week’s blog, it was the day of the Montco Golf Classic, an event produced by my office that included lunch, dinner and on-course snacks.

I came in 427 calories over my daily budget (I would have been fine if I hadn’t indulged in the rigatoni sample from Maggiano’s or the vanilla soft serve at the end of the day).

The rest of the week was routine. With me hitting my budget every day, I was able to make up for my Monday and finish the week within 17 calories of my budgeted allowance.

The Results

This Week’s Weight: 177.0
Weekly Weight Loss: -1.0
Total: Weight Loss: -12.4

The plan worked exactly as it was supposed to. I had calories budgeted to lose one pound. I made it through the week on budget, and I lost one pound. I couldn’t have asked for a better week.

The Week Ahead

As always, I’m writing this on Saturday so by the time you read this, most of these things will have already happened.

This evening is the wedding of my college roommate and his best friend. Julie and I will be celebrating the wedding of Brian Ziller and Gina Biagiotti with our friends and trying to not overindulge on wedding cake.

Tomorrow (Sunday) I have a bike ride scheduled with my brother – 12 miles, here goes nothing – to hopefully offset any damage done at the wedding.

Other than the persistent rain that has marked this month, it’s a normal week and shouldn’t present too many challenges.

That means  a week of no excuses.

It’s Week 7 in my journey to better health. Following up an exciting mini-vacation, things return to normal for me and my diet. What did that mean for my weight loss?

The Successes

For blog purposes, it was a short week (my last weigh-in was Monday and I’m writing this on Saturday). I had a couple opportunities for walks, including one evening walk with Julie and a few quick lunch break walks at work.

At my office, there is actually a walking loop marked in the parking lot and along the access roads.

It’s not a trail, just a series of signs that mark each .1 mile around the building. Most of the walk is through the parking lots, but for an office park in King of Prussia, the scenery isn’t bad.

The delivery road that goes behind the building follows a (usually) dry creek bed. It’s one of a few green spots in KOP that hasn’t been touched by development.

My usual walk takes me along the entire .8 mile loop. Some days I have to do a quicker loop and cut it down to 10 minutes. Other days, I can take my time and make a few laps. My lunch break record is two miles.

In addition to the walks, I spent my Tuesday evening mowing the grass. According to my Lose It app, my 1:15 spent mowing burned more than 400 calories.

As much as I hate mowing, I love being able to eat a little bit more on mowing days.

The Challenges

My biggest challenge came Thursday night while attending the Philadelphia Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 awards at the Sugar House Casino (congratulations again to my boss, Ed Harris, for making this year’s list!).

The food at events like this are hit or miss. This was a miss.

For entrees, selection was limited to vegetable pasta, seafood pasta, a carving station and some cheese and crackers.

I hate seafood and I am not a fan of rare meat from carving stations so I settled on the vegetable pasta. My coworker Taylor rated it a 0 out of 5. I’ll be generous and give it a 1 out of 5, only because it stayed down.

So what happens when dinner is no good? You load up on dessert.

The dessert bar was much more appetizing than hot food. The chocolate mousse cake looked exceptional and I couldn’t pass on the miniature crème brûlée.

Dessert had essentially become dinner. While both looked better than they actually tasted (the cake was dry, the crème brûlée was runny), they still tasted better than dinner, but with way more calories.

The Results

Current Weight: 178.0
Weekly Weight Loss: -1.1
Total Weight Loss:  -11.4

Another week, another pound. My weight loss was right in line where it should be based on my net calories on the Lose It app.

The Week Ahead

It should be a fairly routine week ahead. The only major hiccup could come on Monday. That’s when the Valley Forge Tourism & Convention Board (my day job) hosts its annual Montco Golf Classic.

I won’t be playing in the event. Instead, I will be greeting groups on the course, stationed at one of the tees all day. Unfortunately, that tee will also have food samples from Maggiano’s Little Italy. Last year it was meatballs and chocolate truffles. Four hours on a golf course with Maggiano’s an arm’s length away? It’s going to take a lot of will power to get me through the day.

Evening walks, health-conscious snacking and a weekend getaway to Alexandria, Va. That’s the story of Week 6 of Food Blogger vs. Fat.

The Successes

Most weeks I start off by talking about all the great exercising that I did during the past week. But this time, I want to talk about all the snacks that I’ve been eating.

One of the best decisions that I have made this year was to start a subscription to Graze.

Every two weeks, I get a care package in the mail with eight assorted, well-portioned snacks. They range from single servings of popcorn to assorted nuts to sweets to mixes of all of the above.

My favorites are the kern pops – half-popped popcorn that defies explanation – and the themed nut and fruit mixes. I eat one snack every day at 10 a.m. and it helps get me through until 1 p.m. when I take my lunch.

I would recommend anyone who likes to snack (and who doesn’t) and needs help with portion control. It’s $11.99 for my box of eight snacks, that includes shipping and handling. I’m not getting paid to write this, but like anyone else who has a Graze subscription, I can earn a free box with a referral. So if you do sign up, use code “ZACHB769P” and help a blogger out.

Now for the exercise: I recorded 5.2 miles of walking between Tuesday and Thursday. Then Julie and I went off to our weekend getaway in Alexandria, Va.

Alexandria is a beautiful, historic suburb of Washington, D.C. located along the Potomac River. It’s a town filled with colonial architecture with a walkable downtown and beautiful riverfront parks.

It’s also just a short drive – or in our case, boat ride – from George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

We took a riverboat to the historic estate on Saturday during Mount Vernon’s annual Revolutionary War weekend.

It included a historic encampment of more than 100 men and women, a battle reenactment (not based on any actual battle), presentations on Colonial life and, of course, an appearance by General George Washington.

I did not have my tracker on to count the miles that we walked over the course of the weekend, but I did track the time. Between Friday and Sunday, we spent 7.5 hours walking. Walking from store to store. Walking around the encampment. Walking to and from our hotel. Just walking.

The Challenges

We also spent a lot of time walking to restaurants. Alexandria, like all great downtowns, is loaded with amazing restaurants and sweet shops.

One of our first stops on Friday was to Alexandria Cupcake for an afternoon snack. The cupcakes were phenomenal.

I had the vanilla bean and chocolate – a vanilla cupcake with chocolate icing and a raspberry on top. It was nearly perfect. The icing was so rich and so chocolatey. And it was such a simple thing, but the raspberry was a brilliant touch.

Our dinners weren’t any lighter. On Friday, I followed up my rich treat with an even richer dinner at Virtue Feed & Grain.

It was a modern gastropub in the historic waterfront with an eclectic menu that included my duck meatloaf with tomato marmalade, vanilla sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts.

I absolutely loved the meatloaf. The tomato marmalade on top gave it that perfect balance of sweet and savory. And duck is always flavorful, a darker meat than chicken or turkey with the right amount of fat to work in a meatloaf.

On Saturday, we visited RedRocks Old Town, a craft pizza restaurant in the style of Nonno Alby’s or Rocco’s here in Berks County.

It would have been a good idea to share my spicy chorizo pizza with Julie (or my friend Josh, a resident of nearby Arlington, Va., who joined us for dinner). But I didn’t. I had just spent the day trudging through the rain at Mount Vernon. So I ate the whole thing.

The Results

My normal weigh-in day is Saturday. Obviously, I wasn’t at my scale Saturday morning so instead, I weighed in on Friday morning before I left and again on Monday morning, after the weekend away. Here’s the average of the two:

Current Weight: 179.1
Weekly Weight Loss: -0.5 lbs.
Weight Loss Since Start: -10.3

There was a full one-pound swing between the two weigh-ins, but I’ll consider it a success. And I fully expect to normalize my weight loss at my next weigh-in on Saturday.

The Week Ahead

It’s a routine week for me, hopefully filled with evening and lunchtime walks, less dining out (minus a the weekly blog post, of course) and much-improved weather.

I’m looking forward to it.

It’s Week 5 of Food Blogger vs. Fat, and my journey to better health continues. Here’s a look at the week that was.

The Successes

Last week, I was bemoaning the weather as I watched the raindrops fall outside, ruining my plans for a bike ride.

Instead, Julie convinced me that a walk around the Berkshire Mall was just as good.

Walking in, we stumbled upon the Pretzel City Rod & Custom Car Show. About two dozen hot rods and custom classics were on display throughout the mall.

It certainly made the walk more interesting. And after a couple brief detours into stores – there are far fewer that we are interested in than when we were teenagers – we recorded 1.5 miles of walking.

Sunday was much better as we did a 3.5 mile walk through Wyomissing Park and beyond.

Wyomissing Park is one of our favorite walks and the Pinewoods Trail is a big part of that. There is nothing like the Pinewoods Trail anywhere else in Berks County.

The trail winds through a grove of pines that outlines the park along its border with the Highlands. It’s a different world inside the pines – quiet, dark and eerily enchanting. It’s the perfect springboard for a lengthy walk.

Thursday night was lawn mowing night and on Friday I squeezed in a walk at work and nine holes of disc golf in the evening.

The Challenges

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, I recorded no exercise. It was my longest break from exercise since I started this healthy journey.

And on Wednesday and Thursday my caloric intake came in just over my limit. But Monday and Friday were well under my limit so my net was 500 calories under budget.

The Results

As I have gone through this journey, I have settled into a bizarre pattern of alternating weeks of great results and mediocrity. Last week was mediocre. This week was better.

Current Weight: 179.6
Weekly Weight Loss: -2.8
Weight Loss Since Start: -9.8

Back into the 170s! I’m not quite at 10 pounds lost since I began, but seeing that seven in the middle of my weight feels good.

I still can’t explain it, but the trend continues. Perhaps it’s just a case of timing. I’m sure I didn’t lose 2.8 pounds all in one week, but I did lose three pounds in two weeks, which is a good, consistent weight loss that leaves me nearly five weeks ahead of schedule.

The Week Ahead

It’s another crazy week for me this week, concluding with a weekend away in Alexandria, Va.

While at my conference in Tucson, I won a silent auction for a three-day, two-night getaway in Alexandria so we are making the trip before the sweltering summer hits the Washington, D.C. area.

But that means two things: 1) I can’t weigh in on Saturday as has become my custom – we’ll be leaving on Friday – and 2) I’ll be dining out for all three meals.

Hopefully I can make smart choices that keep on track and not lose the ground I have gained over these first five weeks.

Week four of Food Blogger vs. Fat is now in the books – that’s a full month of work and a full month of results. Here’s an inside look into how it’s going so far:

The Successes

I started the week with one of my favorite hobbies (and Julie’s too): disc golfing.

For those who aren’t familiar with the sport, disc golf is just like real golf only you’re throwing discs (don’t call them Frisbees) at a basket instead of hitting golf balls into a hole.

Berks County is home to four disc golf courses (with dozens more in the neighboring counties), including two of them on the fringe of the city of Reading – one at Alvernia University and one at Laurelain Park in Muhlenberg Township.

Laurelain is a nine-hole course that opened at the end of 2016, and is our favorite of the two courses. For us, it’s a quick drive up the Warren Street Bypass to River Road up to Muhlenberg.

The park – with its disc golf course and walking paths – is a hidden gem. It’s a quiet neighborhood park that really only brings outsiders for the disc golf and soccer games.

Many of the holes at Laurelain are wide open with minimal trees, but some holes are heavily wooded and two have water that very much comes into play.

It’s a lot of fun and a lot cheaper – average discs cost between $10-20 each – and less time consuming – we did our nine holes in about 35 minutes – compared to real golf. There’s also no greens fees (though some golf courses have actually installed disc golf baskets and do charge a nominal fee).

But it is just as frustrating when you miss a short putt with a disc as it is on a green.

The rest of my week was all walking: a total of three hours and nine miles between Sunday and Friday.

The Challenges

This week was actually fairly easy as far as sticking to the diet and exercise. The only exceptions were Tuesday when I didn’t record any exercise but did come in under my calorie limit and Wednesday when I came in 130 calories over my daily limit (my current budget on my Lose It app is 2,051) but did manage 30 minutes of exercise.

The Results

As is usual, I weighed in on Saturday morning, and here’s what the scale said:

Current Weight: 182.4
Loss Since Last Week: -0.2
Loss Since Start: 7.0

It was an OK week for results. Coming off a week where I lost 3.8 pounds, I wanted to slow down this week, but was hoping to be closer to the one-pound mark.

Still, I’m ahead of pace by three pounds and I have a lot of motivation coming into the new week.

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s Saturday afternoon. The rain is coming down outside and I’m frustrated because I had planned to be out on a long bike ride right now. Instead, I’m stuck inside with my stationary bike as my only real option right now.

The rest of the week doesn’t look much better with rain forecasted three of the next five days. That may mean a trip or two to the gym or timing my walks to miss the raindrops.