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.