Before

During her pregnancy, Mann bought an elliptical trainer and used it daily. After the baby? "It became a clothes hanger," she says. Not only was she exhausted—by 9:30 a.m. she'd usually already been up for four hours—but between the baby's needs, her full-time job as an event planner, and hurrying home to see the baby before bedtime, Mann had no energy for meal planning, let alone exercise. "My husband and I would go to the kitchen, open the fridge, and graze," she recalls. Without a proper dinner, she never felt satisfied: "Between 8:30 p.m. and when I went to sleep, I wanted to eat everything in the house." And she often did.

Miller hadn't worked out since her sixth month of pregnancy when the baby moved to the top of her bladder: "My exercise was walking back and forth to the bathroom," she recalls. So after a year hiatus, she had to get her head back into the idea of workouts, let alone the physical aspects of getting in shape (lifting weights, running, doing sit-ups after a C-section). Not relying on food when she was tired, stressed, and/or alone—Miller's husband is a human-rights lawyer who travels frequently for work—was another (even more daunting) hurdle for her to overcome.

DURING

It did take an appointment with a trainer to get Mann out of bed; she knew Gonzalez would be waiting, so twice a week she got on the 7 a.m. train to make it to the gym by 8. On other days, she would squeeze in cardio homework after work, even if it was just a half hour on the elliptical. "I was so tired when I got home, but both Emanuel and Jackie said if I stuck it out for just 30 minutes, I'd feel better," she says. "And they were right." Mann's multitasking twist on strength training involved using Lucy as a weight: "I'd do sit-ups with her on my lap or lift her over my head." She also bought a jogging stroller, "so watching the baby wouldn't be an excuse."

Scribbling accompanied all this sweating: Keller had Mann keep a journal of everything she put into her mouth, and "after a week, it clicked that I was making poor food choices." Instead of falling into the usual cheese-and-crackerstravaganza, Mann started planning her daily intake ("For a snack, I can have a small cottage cheese or a piece of fruit, but that's it"), reading labels, shopping for specific meals, and cooking easy recipes. "I have one for chicken marinated in soy sauce and olive oil that I eat all the time now," she says.

Like Mann, it was the sessions with Gonzalez that got Miller to the gym. "If I don't have a set appointment," Miller says, "it's very easy to blow it off, since I need to get home right away after work [to relieve the nanny]." Gonzalez helped Miller with overall toning and kept her focused and motivated by varying the exercises. "It wasn't just the same old routine," Miller points out. "He really mixed things up [and introduced] a good combination that I can do on my own now." From working with Keller on the nutrition front, Miller learned to weigh her eating against her exercise. Keller suggested Miller use a pedometer to measure number of steps she took (either running or speed walking). "I became addicted to it," Miller confesses. She even took it with her on a recent trip to Paris with her husband—"not to be militant, but because I wanted to be able to see what I did and then have a big glass of wine and everything else."

Next Page: The Excuses