I meant to post yesterday for a “Fitness Friday” update, but it’s been such a busy week! Between various photo shoots, Zachary being off for the Jewish Holidays (HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone!!) and my parents being out of town, we’ve been busier than usual.

It’s been a month since I last posted about how we were doing, fitness-wise, and I wanted to check in. Adrian and I have both been continuing to run over the past month, and Adrian has been doing great. I’m really proud of him and love that we are sharing this together. Even though we aren’t running together (we take turns watching the kids), it’s still fun and gives us another hobby that we can enjoy and talk about.

As for me… it’s been a little slow-going. I feel like things keep getting in my way! A few weeks ago, I had a horrible pain in my foot that put me out of commission for several days, and then last week, my back started acting up again. I have a nerve that gets pinched in my upper back, and sometimes when I’m overdoing it at the computer, it acts up — my only option is to stay horizontal as much as possible to rest it and recover.

Since I had felt better from my back issue, I went for a run Thursday evening. I didn’t expect it to be that fantastic, since I hadn’t done a great job hydrating for the past few days, and it had been a whole week since my last time out running. I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder because I was able to jog an entire mile without stopping — fifteen minutes straight!! I continued to finish a second mile, but I was pretty exhausted from jogging my first and had to do a bunch of walking for mile #2. Still, it’s a huge amount of progress considering three months ago I could barely even run for 30 seconds without needing to quit! HUGE!! I am super proud of myself. I just need to keep working hard and remembering to hydrate.

Here I am after finishing that run! Yay, me!

As far as my weight loss goes, that’s also been going a little slower than I would prefer. I’ve lost 3.4lb in the past month, and have hit the 25lb loss mark, which isn’t bad at all, but thought I would for sure be a little further along by now! For the past two weeks or so, I’ve been on a bit of a plateau. I also have been slacking a bit as far as the exercise goes. I know that those two things go hand in hand. I’ve only been running about 1-2 times a week, and I haven’t been doing my Dance Central Xbox game as often as I should. Well, that’s going to change. I am getting much closer to my goal weight, and I need to step it up.

I have two goals this month: 1) I want to start working out at least 4x per week again. I can always do a short Xbox workout during naptime or after the kids go to bed — I have no excuse! 2) I need to hydrate as much as possible. I feel so much better during my runs and workouts when I’m hydrated, and I’m terrible at drinking water. I recently purchased this awesome “planets” themed Tervis Tumbler so that I can constantly have a water cup around me (and not have to use plastic bottles), and it’s definitely helping. I need to really focus and make sure I drink my 8 glasses each day.

Do you have any fitness or health goals this month? What are they, and how do you plan to achieve them?