Time For Some Reflection...

I love milestones (heck, I love any reason to celebrate), and I hit a big one with this blog a couple days ago: I have officially written over 50 posts!

**Side Note** That's about 48 more than I honestly thought I would write, which is why I am so excited to be over halfway to a three digit number **End of Side Note**

Since hitting a milestone naturally causes one to reflect, I've been pondering my blog's purpose(s) for the past few days. Obviously, the main purpose is to have a place to share/reflect/etc. on the experience of being the wife of a dental school student. While I am sure other blogs exist on the subject (and a few months ago was found by Ariel, the author of a great one), at the time I started Diary of a Dental School Wife I couldn't find any.

At that point, I was becoming very anxious about the unknown and (as I always do when anxiety hits) started focusing on the negatives that are coming over the next 4 years (ie: Joe's busy schedule, the expense, the delay in our baby-making plans, moving away from my family, etc.). I thought that reading the experiences of someone else would help me, and if I personally didn't have anyone else to learn from, then it might be worth starting a blog to help some other poor, lost dental-school-wife-to-be out there going through similar worries down the road.

A secondary purpose was to have a place for our family and friends to come and see what is going on in our lives. Most of Joe's family is in Missouri, and I knew that once we moved for dental school I'd be far from my family as well. Since I absolutely SUCK at keeping in touch with people (it doesn't help that I hate talking on the phone), I thought a blog would be a great solution to help keep people in the loop.

My final purpose was a bit more personal, and one that I haven't yet succeeded in doing with this blog. After finding and being inspired by a great weight loss blog (Mama Laughlin) I wanted to keep a blog as a way of keeping myself accountable in my own journey to lose weight. Although I've always fluctuated in weight and have never been "skinny" - I am now about 50 pounds heavier than I was at my lowest adult weight (junior year of college after 5 months of diet and exercise led to a 20 pound drop). While it could certainly be worse, the thought of seeing people I haven't seen in years on our road trip is humiliating. I feel like I am going to walk in, give them a squishy hug, and they'll step back and think, "Poor girl. Why is she letting herself go?"

Those of you who read some of my earlier posts may remember that I dieted for a month around Christmastime (stupid timing, what was I thinking?) and chronicled a lot of that process. As I do with most diets, I abandoned it and probably gained back what I lost and more (I've been too scared to weigh myself since early January).

This month home with my family hasn't helped my waistline (despite my dad's daily encouragement to do P90X with him), and I know that a 6 week road trip is probably going to do quite a bit of damage. To be honest, this is the last vacation Joe and I are going to get for a VERY long time, and maybe the last one pre-children (any time off we have in dental school will probably be spent visiting family). I'm not willing to diet on this trip. You'll probably see many photos of food posted on my Instagram and this blog and think to yourself, "Poor girl, digging a deeper hole." Yes. Yes I will be. But I am not going to set myself up for failure like I did by trying to diet during Christmastime and one of the biggest emotional roller coasters in my life (choosing a dental school, wrapping up work, moving, leaving my family, etc.).

Instead, I'm going to make myself a promise right now.

(And I'm not going to like it.)

Penn Dental School hosts an event every year (around April) called the Philly Oral Cancer Walk and 5k. I vow here and now that next year I will be running it. I may be the last one to that finish line, I may be crying big ugly tears, I may be cursing this stupid post where I made a promise I never should have made, but I'll be there.

Running a 5k has been a goal of mine for a couple years. Over the last year I've attempted Couch to 5k twice and abandoned it each time I had to run more than 5 minutes in a row because I physically couldn't do it (and because I absolutely flat out LOATHE running). That said, I can't stand the idea of something beating me. To run a 5k (or, God willing, something even longer some day?) would be like giving a giant middle finger to running and saying, "See?! You can't beat me!"

So, while I don't intend to make this entirely a weight loss blog (how boring would that be?), it will be something that I start to integrate once we get to Philly. Because if I don't, this 5k is not going to be pretty.

Follow me on Bloglovin'