Ooh! Ooh! Me! Me! I want to join!!!

LOL
My name is Jennifer and this is EXACTLY what I need. My story is a little long, but I really need people to keep me accountable and check up on me if I'm not sticking to the plan. Are you guys up for that?
Ok then, I'm Jennifer - a 33 year old wife and step-mother to a 15 yo son and 13 yo daughter. I adore my kids, but I am SO EXCITED that my amazing husband and I are planning our 10th Anniversary trip this September! Just the two of us for 7 amazing days - I can't even imagine. We are even planning a super-simple vow renewal while we are there just to celebrate and reaffirm our love for each other after a really tough year.
Here's what this past year has been like for us: In August I hurt my back - they didn't know what had happened but put me on bed rest while they ran test after test after test. Luckily I have an amazing job that allowed me to work from home for 3 months until they found out I had a severely herniated disk and needed emergency surgery. I had the surgery in November and did another 6 weeks of bed rest. Both good and bad was that my DH was laid off in October. I'm glad he was here to help me after surgery but with the economy the way it is, I was nervous. After the recovery, I went back to work for 2 1/2 weeks and guess what? I re-herniated the disk. This only happens to less than 5% of the people who have the surgery I had and it's the result of nothing I'm doing - just a really bad disk. They put me back on bed rest to see if it would correct itself. After 7 more weeks, it was worse and I had surgery again. I'm now on week 3 of recovery with 3 more weeks of bed rest. You have no idea how much I am looking forward to going back to work and having a life again. My DH has been out of work this entire time so it has been great being together, but it's also been hard on him to have to do everything for the family. But we have made it through and are determined not to go through this again!
I'm sorry for the looong story, but I wanted to explain why I won't be working out for the next 3 weeks, but also why it is so important that I lose this weight and build up my core strength. My absolute goal would be to lose right around 75-80 pounds and look like I did in college. I'm 5'10" and would love to be a slender size 10-12 again. I hate shopping in plus sized stores more than anything! Anyway, my goal before our trip is to lose as much weight as I can so that I will feel beautiful and confident as I recommit to my amazing husband! I don't know a # yet, but I'm going to stick with 80 pounds as my goal.
In the meantime, I'm a great cheerleader if you'll have me!!!

I know that my biggest fault will be sticking to this, so it would be great to have people who will PM me or "fuss" at me if I don't check in.
And there you have it!
ETA: The 8 pound loss is something I have NO idea how I did. When I weighed in for surgery 2, I had lost weight! Who knew that laying flat on your back eating junk food all day for weeks could result in weight loss? I think something screwy happened, so I'll update everything when I get up and really start this process!