I WILL Rock This. I Will. Totally. Right?

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It's May 1, 2012.

I'm turning 35 in 65 days.

Thirty-fave scares me in a way 30 never did. Thirty-five is approaching middle age for official, and I almost had a heart attack the other day when on Women's World in the checkout stand I noticed a title “Over 35? Never fear! You can still lose weight!” WTF?

Thirty-five is a new demographic bracket. I'm not (thankfully?) lumped in with those kids, those 24 year olds. The ones who were born when I was in junior high. You know what I mean, right? Yeah, them.

But I digress. So I'm approaching 35 and having a little mini midlife crisis. It started when I signed up for a duathalon (which is in less than 3 weeks! Yikes!) and I've been contemplating taking more aggressive steps for a while.

And then my lovely friend, Wendy, posted on Twitter that she was thinking about organizing a wight loss challenge group, and would anyone be interested in joining her? Long story short, there are now 30 of us, mostly moms and mostly bloggers, who have created this amazing, supportive community, and we're all going to challenge each other to lose weight, from today, May 1, until our final weigh-in on July 1, just 3 days before my personal “D-Day” There's cash on the line, here, for whoever loses the highest percentage at the end.

This is serious bidness, I tell you!

I'm on day 10 of no soda (huge, if you knew my Diet Coke addiction previously) and am eliminating as much sugars/carbs as I can in the meantime. Jamie and I are planning on tacking Jillian Michaels and her imfamous 30 Day Shred, so we'll see how that goes!

So here's where this gets scary for me: I want need you to help hold me accountable. For the next 60 days (and from there on, if you're so inclined!) I'm posting a couple of Before photos. I am currently the heaviest I've ever been, except for when my kidneys failed (150 lb weight gain in 6 weeks) and the day before Max was born (I want to say I was around 230?). I'm not giving you numbers, but I might when all is said and done.

Pictures will have to do. Keep in mind that a) I'm well-trained to suck it in all day, b) pop-up flash is evil, and c) I'm wearing workout clothes because they'll show the biggest difference between now and July 1. I can hope that these pants will be falling off me by then, but I also don't want to set myself up for failure.

*Deep breath*

This is me, about 20 minutes ago:

So please, hold me to it. Because it's only with support from my friends, family, blog readers, and Twitter followers that #iwillrockthis.

(PS: Click on over to Wendy's blog to see posts from a bunch of the other participating ladies!)