Sue Erickson. (Fit People).

Sue Erickson delivered her first child, Matthew, nine months and one day after she married in June 1998. Though instantly busy with nursing, changing diapers, and rocking the often fussy infant, she soon asked the million-dollar postpartum question with the quiet desperation common to women: "How do I get my body back?"

Erickson shares that since adolescence she has struggled to shed the extra 10 pounds stubbornly padding her thighs. After birthing a 9-pound-10-ounce baby, a tummy bulge remained and added to her fretting. But once in June 1997 before her original wedding date and again in June 1998 when the rescheduled ceremony took place, she achieved the magic number--the dream weight for a thirtysomething 5-foot-seven-inch female with her build.

So she knew she could do it. And she set out to do it shortly after settling into life with the new hubby and the honeymoon baby in Boulder, Colorado. Then, just a few months after leaving the hospital's OB/gyn floor, an inexplicable nausea welled up and made fruits, vegetables, and other "healthy" foods look about as tasty as packing peanuts.

Surprise! Erickson was pregnant again with baby number two, due just 12 months after baby number one's delivery. As hormones surged through her body, she nervously wondered if she would experience the same kind of pregnancy-related nausea she endured the first time around. The low-fat high-fiber diet that helped her lose weight and look great before the wedding clearly would not work during either pregnancy.

"My friend Sally said, `Sometimes you just have to sacrifice your body for the cause,'" Erickson remembers with a laugh and the broad smile of good sport.

"As you're growing with the child, you can't really tell what weight is because of the baby and what weight is simply overweight," Erickson adds. "During the first three months I had to eat whatever looked good and would stay down. During the last six months I was so big I couldn't really see how that was impacting my body."

She understandably longed to deliver Jeffrey and finally get back into the health and fitness swing. But complications dashed those hopes. His birth ruptured her uterus and split her abdominal muscles, which required emergency surgery. It took nearly a year before she was both physically sound and--more important--motivated to move it.

She at long last relaunched her fitness quest in April 2001, a year after her youngest's first birthday. With the help of a like-minded neighborhood workout buddy, Erickson now exercises four to five times a week at daybreak while the kiddies catch their last winks and her husband gets ready for work.

She points out that her ambitious routine of hiking, spinning, and weight training hasn't melted many pounds. Yet regularly exercising makes her feel stronger, healthier, and happier.

Modifying her eating habits will take more time and effort. After all, she's drawn to the starchy and sweet foods that typically thwart dieters. And as a mom who served as a missionary to the hungry country of Kenya in 1993, she can hardly stand to see food go to waste on her table. She consequently nibbles on the stray goldfish crackers and bread crusts the kids leave behind.

But as a Christian, she understands that long-term change involves seeking God first in the struggle (Matthew 6:33). For instance, during her two successful prewedding weigh-downs, she followed a Bible-based weight-loss program called Prism. Besides providing eating and exercising guidelines, it encouraged each participant to journal thoughts and feelings about the process each day. This led Erickson into consistent, quality quiet times with God. And by giving Him her issues with food and body image, she grew spiritually as her measurements shrank.

"Seeking God first has an overflow to many other areas of my life. If I'm disciplined about time with God, I tend to be disciplined about exercise and about eating right, too," Erickson reflects. "Whereas exercise doesn't have an overflow feel--it's just exercise." So, like millions of believers everywhere, she presses on in the struggle to put God first and by faith hopes that this struggle--more than any other--will slowly but surely fall into line during the course of her lifetime.

Pam Mellskog writes on health topics from Lafayette, Colorado.