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.