The Money Diet, week 21: Exercising, Indiana Jones-style

"The turkey you're eating," my brother told me as I bit into my sandwich, "is actually tofu. And the cheese is actually rice cheese."

That's probably the most memorable thing I heard during week 21 of "The Money Diet." I was on a hike with my brother, Kevin, and we were sitting on a bench on the trail, somewhere in a forest in some park near Germantown, Ohio, overlooking a scenic river. We'd been hiking for about an hour when we decided to stop for lunch. This activity -- the hiking, not the eating of lunch -- was some time coming, and something I need to do more of.

As anyone who reads this column regularly knows, I'm in the midst of a quest to lose weight, and I've been primarily trying to do so by cutting out snacks and junk food and then, as motivation, adding up what I'm saving by not buying this stuff.

While it worked pretty well for awhile -- I lost 20 pounds then gained a few back -- I'm in my "plateau stage," as I like to call it. That, in a sense, is what brought me to the tick-infested woods in 87-degree weather, eating a rice cheese and tofu sandwich on low-calorie bread.