Get Fit for 2013: Trainer Harley Pasternak Answers ‘GMA’ Viewers’ Questions

It’s a new year and many people have made resolutions to get fit.

Celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak ( @harleypasternak) has trained celebrities including Rihanna and Katy Perry and this morning he appeared on “Good Morning America” to show specific exercise moves to get you an all-star body.

Work the Body Parts

For Great Legs

Do sumo squats. You have to stand with your legs wide apart and toes turned out. Sink your buttocks down. You don’t even have to buy weights to do this. For added resistance, you can use jugs of laundry detergent.

For Abs of Steel

The key to amazing abs is to have a strong back. That means you have to strengthen the lower back by doing an alternating superman: lie face down and lift the left arm and right leg up simultaneously.

For a Shapely Rear End

For this it’s about a stiff dead left. Standing up and with your back straight, push your buttocks as far back as you can and come back to neutral.

For Sculpted Arms

To get toned arms you can do a close grip press-up. It’s like a push-up but instead you have your hands right under your shoulders and you press your chest up but leave your lower body on the ground.

RELATED: Jump-Start Your Weight Loss: Ask Celebrity Trainers a Question

For Manly Shoulders

Men who want impressive shoulders can do an Arnold Press, named after former California governor and fitness legend Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hold a pair of hand weights, and with palms facing toward the chest, press the weights up toward the ceiling, letting your palms rotate.

Harley Pasternak Answers Your Questions

FAST WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT?

Sanju asked : What is the best way to lose 5 to 7 pounds in two weeks?

Harley’s answer: Eat 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, each with a balance of lean protein, fibrous carbs, and healthy fats. Move all day! Grab a pedometer and walk at least 10,000 steps a day, and resistance train at least three days per week. Sleep seven to eight hours a night. Lack of sleep will make you hungrier and can slow down your metabolism

OVERNIGHT WORK SCHEDULE, WHEN DO I WORK OUT?

Rita of Elkhart, Ind., asked : I work overnights, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., five nights a week. I do manage to sleep 7 to 8 hours a day. But don’t know when the best time for me to work out and eat would be. Currently I am doing everything in reverse, eating my “breakfast” at 5 p.m. and a small meal at work. I have tried exercising at 8 p.m. but find I don’t have much energy afterword. Any suggestions?

Harley’s answer: Exercise should give you energy, not take it away. If you feel exhausted after you workout, perhaps your working out too hard and for too long, or you don’t have the right fuel. Try working out when you wake up, or right after you’re done with work, or during your lunch break (probably 3 a.m. for you!)

RELATED: Apps to Help With Resolutions

HOW DO YOU STAY MOTIVATED?

Lisa of Albuquerque, N.M., asked : I am 45, 5’4? and 180 pounds. Believe it or not, I eat healthy for the most part and I know what I need to do to lose the weight (exercise a lot more), but my question is, how do you stay motivated? I am on an extremely tight budget and can’t afford a gym or the “extra healthy” foods/diet programs and I find myself getting discouraged at every turn. I’ve given up on trying to achieve the unrealistic body image I had when I was younger, now I would just like to lose the extra 50 pounds I’m carrying around and look better for me.

Harley’s answer: You are motivated. You took the time to write this question. Motivation is not the issue. It’s taking your motivation and putting it into action. Try breaking it up into small actionable goals. Did you walk 10,000 steps today? Did you sleep seven to eight hours? Did you eat protein, fiber and healthy fat with each meal? By achieving those goals you have control over, you will succeed at losing weight and keeping it off.

READ MORE : 138 Pound Weight Loss Changes Woman’s Life

TONING ARMS

Sudie of Kansas City, Mo., asked : I can’t seem to tone my arms. I do cardio four times a week, upper body two times and lower body two times. What am I doing wrong that my arms will not tone?

Harley’s answer: It could be one of many things. Are you training hard enough? Is there enough variation in your program? More important, is there fat covering the muscles of your arms that prohibits them from looking toned and lean. If so, is your diet off? Are you doing enough cardio? I leave it to you to answer.

WORKOUTS FOR WOMAN WITH KNEE PROBLEMS

Cheyenne of Tucson, Ariz., asked: Since I can remember I’ve had trouble with my knees and of course as I’ve aged, the problem has gotten worse. I don’t want to resort to surgery and have heard that I can strengthen the muscles around the knees to help, but I don’t know where to start. My knees are so bad I cannot squat down without pain, and even then cannot do a proper squat or go down very far. As for kneeling, it is nearly impossible, except for brief periods. I know losing weight will help but I need to know what I can do to get moving, helping me to not only lose weight but improve my knees to the point where I can enjoy being active again.

Harley’s answer: Obviously, without knowing what’s wrong with your knees, I’m not sure how to help them, but, swimming is a great activity for many people with bad knees and backs. Try finding a local swimming pool and get wet!

TRICKS TO LOSE LAST STUBBORN POUNDS?

Kia of Philadelphia, Pa., asked: How do I lose those last stubborn pounds? I have about 15 more pounds I would like to lose. Currently I strength train 5 times a week and do cardio five or six times a week (35 to 60 minutes). Should I increase the strength training or cardio or both to lose those last stubborn pounds?

Harley’s answer: Sounds like you’re doing all you can with your workouts so I assume it’s a diet issue for you. Try keeping a diet log and having your diet analyzed with myfitnesspal.com.

EXERCISE POST MENOPAUSE TO SEE RESULTS?

Janice of Beltsville, Md., asked : I have tried many different exercises and food plans but since I entered into menopause nothing seems to be working. What would you suggests I do to see results of a weight loss?

Harley’s answer: Are you eating as well as you can? Are you as active as you should be? If the answer is yes (and it usually is not), then see your doctor. Perhaps you have another health issue that needs to be addressed.

TONE CORE AND GET RID OF ARM FLAB?

Kittie of Huntington Beach, Calif., asked : Hi, I am 57 years old and I have consistently worked out for many years. I do weights four to five times a week and do cardio for an hour each time I lift weights. I do two 30-minute intervals of cardio, one on the elliptical and a walk run on the treadmill. I look the same all the time and not sure what I should be doing now. I would like my core to be better and flatter and my arms to look tight even without flexing my muscles. How do I flatten/tighten my core and get rid of the flab on the back of my arms? I am 5’4? and weight about 145.

Harley’s answer: Do you change up your program? Change the sets, reps, resistance, the combination of body parts, the cadence at which you’re training? Even the music you listen to can make a difference! And, of course, keep a diet log and see if you really are eating as well as you can!

EXERCISE WHILE WALKING FOR MOM ON THE GO?

Stacia of Tunkhannock, Pa., asked : I eat fairly healthy, but do not get any exercise. I would like to walk. Can you suggest something to get the most out of a walk with a 3-year-old child in tow?

Harley’s answer: Pick up a pedometer. It’s a tiny device that keeps track of how many steps you take a day. Shoot for at least 10,000 a day. Otherwise, get a comfortable pair of shoes.

MORE: Chris Powell’s New Year’s Fitness Tips

MORE: Star Trainer Tracy Anderson’s A-List Body Secrets

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The Fiscal Cliff Deal and the Damage Done

Ordinarily we call a deal in which neither side gets what it wants a victory for democracy. Shared sacrifice produces moderation and probity. But any process in which the Speaker of the House tells the Senate Majority Leader “Go f-‍-‍- yourself,” as John Boehner instructed Harry Reid at the height of fiscal cliff madness, deserves just a bit of examination.

The Jan. 1 deal, which Wall Street cheered, moderates tax increases and spending cuts that would have amounted to more than $ 600 billion in 2013. It’s worth noting, though, that the fiscal cliff was the mooncalf monster-child of Congress itself. The automatic spending cuts (“sequester”) were invented by an act of Congress a mere 17 months ago after the 2011 debt ceiling showdown. To praise this new deal as an accomplishment is to praise an arsonist for extinguishing his own fire.

Congress voted to permanently preserve the Bush tax cuts for roughly 99 percent of taxpaying households, but the rate increase for the 1 Percent has infuriated antitax purists, who vow to exact more spending cuts in a couple of months, when the U.S. faces the triple threat of a debt ceiling, postponed automatic spending cuts, and expiration of the law that keeps the government funded. The arsonists now have a new box of matches.

Why have Americans been sentenced to this years-long cycle of pettiness, delay, and zero-sum gamesmanship? You could argue it’s a crisis of leadership—that our elected representatives are examples of our worst, most partisan selves. That seems unlikely. Rather, the budget conflict, at its essence, is a clash over something that rarely lends itself to compromise: morality. Budgetary puritans believe, ferociously, that too much government spending is not just inefficient, but self-indulgent. They view the world’s largest economy as an indebted family that needs to get back to basics. “The federal government needs to tighten its belt just like every hardworking American family has had to do during our economic recovery,” Representative Kurt Schrader, a fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrat from Oregon, said last year.

The economy-as-family metaphor is familiar, emotionally intuitive—and incorrect. It’s a fallacy of composition: What’s true for the part is not necessarily true for the whole. While a single family can get its finances back on track by spending less than it earns, it’s impossible for everyone to do that simultaneously. When the plumber skips a haircut, the barber can’t afford to have his drains cleaned.

British economist John Maynard Keynes explained the futility of trying to shrink an economy into prosperity via thriftiness in his A Treatise on Money in 1930: “Mere abstinence is not enough by itself to build cities or drain fens,” Keynes wrote. “If Enterprise is afoot, wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, wealth decays whatever Thrift may be doing. Thus, Thrift may be the handmaiden of Enterprise. But equally she may not. And, perhaps, even usually she is not.”

So let’s try a different metaphor. The economy is not a family but an engine that’s stuck in low gear. It doesn’t need a disciplinarian; it needs a mechanic.

The primary goal of government should be to get the economy running at full throttle once again. That will restore jobs and wealth and increase tax revenue, which narrows budget deficits. Mark Blyth, a Brown University political scientist with a forthcoming book called Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, says: “Democrats should have said to Republicans, ‘You’re the guys who created the debt. We’ll deal with the debt when we return to growth. Get lost.’”

That’s a slightly kinder way of rephrasing Boehner’s instructions to Reid, but there’s economic wisdom beneath the brushoff. Budgetary puritans may be sincere, but they’re confusing a short-term problem with a long-term one. In the 2020s and beyond, the country risks an explosion of debt caused by the aging of the population and rising health-care costs. That must be dealt with. But in the present, with the economy still operating 6 percent below its potential (chart), it emphatically does not need a big dose of deficit reduction.

If Congress were stacked with 535 centrist macroeconomists, it would have voted to supply more stimulus to the economy immediately while also setting up a mechanism for reducing deficits over the long term. “If stimulus is part of a credible long-term deal, that’s the best of all possible worlds,” says Chris Varvares, co-founder of St. Louis-based Macroeconomic Advisers.

The deal that Congress produced does roughly the opposite. It subtracts stimulus in the short term while worsening the long-term budget picture. George W. Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 took a huge bite out of the government’s revenue, but at least they had expiration dates. In contrast, the tax cuts in the budget deal that passed in the Senate are permanent. Theoretically, they can be ended by a future Congress. Politically, though, it’s much harder to raise taxes than to allow cuts to expire.

If it weren’t obvious enough, neither party has a monopoly on fiscal intelligence. At Democrats’ insistence, Congress did nothing to “bend the curve” on spending on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Entitlement spending—mostly on the health-care side—could derail the U.S. economy in coming decades if left unaddressed. A small change in the trajectory of entitlement spending and taxation would have furthered the goal of “gas now, brakes later”—having very little impact in the next few years but becoming increasingly valuable in coming decades, when the deficits begin to explode. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, lamented in a statement that “the deal approved yesterday is truly a missed opportunity to do something big to reduce our long-term fiscal problems.”

What complicates efforts to get government policy right is that the world has changed in a way that most politicians, and even many economists, fail to grasp. In ordinary times, steering the economy is best left to the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. The Fed, with its ability to raise and lower short-term interest rates instantly, can act faster and with more finesse than any legislative body. But Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has taken monetary policy just about as far as it can go. The Fed has pushed short-term interest rates to the “zero lower bound” and yields on long-term Treasuries to historic lows. Each fresh salvo has less impact than the one before. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York points out that mortgage rates haven’t fallen as much as they should have, given the drop the Fed has managed to engineer in rates on mortgage-backed securities. And businesses aren’t using cheap long-term funds to expand, as Jeremy Stein, a Harvard University economist who is a newcomer to the Fed’s Board of Governors, observed in a Nov. 30 speech. They’re more likely to use the proceeds to pay off short-term debt or pay dividends.

For Washington, there’s an opportunity in this unusual situation. Just as monetary policy loses effectiveness, fiscal policy has become more potent than ever. Ordinarily, Congress can’t boost gross domestic product much through deficit spending because its extra borrowing raises interest rates, crowding private borrowers out of the market. Today there’s no risk of crowding out because there are lots of idle resources—labor, machinery, and money. The Fed will keep long-term rates down no matter how much the government borrows.

It pains deficit hawks to hear this, but ever since the 2008 financial crisis, government red ink has been an elixir for the U.S. economy. After the crisis, households strove to pay down debt and businesses hoarded profits while skimping on investment. If the federal government had tried to run balanced budgets, there would have been an enormous economywide deficit of demand and the economic slump would have been far worse. In 2009 fiscal policy added about 2.7 percentage points to what the economy’s growth rate would have been, according to calculations by Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics (MCO). But since then the U.S. has underutilized fiscal policy as a recession-fighting tool. The economic boost dropped to just half a percentage point in 2010. Fiscal policy subtracted from growth in 2011 and 2012 and will do so again in 2013, to the tune of about 1 percentage point, Zandi estimates.

It could have been worse. President Obama has been a smarter slump fighter than British Prime Minister David Cameron. The Tory vowed to reduce budget deficits by curtailing spending. But the government’s cuts weakened the economy, clipping 2012 growth to roughly zero. It’s hard to balance the budget when the economy is that weak: For all its painful austerity, Britain’s deficit-to-GDP ratio is no better than America’s. And you say “trillion-dollar deficit” like it’s a bad thing!

The Tea Partiers and Blue Dogs who rail against deficits warn that the U.S. risks becoming another Greece. The difference is that for Greece, austerity is a brutal necessity; the International Monetary Fund and other official sources that are providing funds to the country insist on it. The U.S. has no such constraint. Investors are so eager to lend money to the U.S. that the Treasury can issue 10-year inflation-protected securities at an interest rate of –0.75 percent. The U.S. has the breathing room to spend what’s needed to raise the economy’s long-run growth potential, whether it be stepping up government-sponsored research and development, fixing roads and bridges, or fully funding Head Start.

Early in 2012, two prominent Democratic economists argued that when interest rates are at zero, stimulus can actually pay for itself by increasing economic activity. It was the left’s counterpart to the right’s argument that tax cuts can pay for themselves by juicing up growth. The case appeared in a Brookings Institution paper by J. Bradford DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Summers, who was President Clinton’s Treasury secretary and National Economic Council director for part of President Obama’s first term. Their case for stimulus hinges partly on the danger of hysteresis—the idea that weakness begets more weakness. Laid-off workers lose skills and become unemployable, causing unemployment to remain high. In the presence of hysteresis, there’s a big payoff from bringing unemployment down as quickly as possible. DeLong and Summers also say that in today’s weak economy, increased government spending has a bigger-than-usual bang for the buck. In technical terms, the “multiplier” is high. Valerie Ramey, a University of California at San Diego economist who was designated to comment on the paper, responded that the economists may have used overoptimistic estimates for hysteresis and the multiplier. In a Jan. 1 e-mail, DeLong stood by their paper. He was scheduled to continue his argument for more stimulus in San Diego on Jan. 6 at an American Economic Association session also featuring Ramey and Paul Krugman.

Those who condemned the budget deal, from the left and the right, focused on its mix of tax hikes and spending cuts. Supply-siders regard tax increases as a worse method of budget-balancing than spending cuts because they reduce incentives to work. Keynesians regard tax increases as a better choice because they reduce demand less than an equivalent dollar amount of spending cuts would. Especially at the high end of incomes, people keep spending even when their taxes go up.

As a first cut, though, ideology is irrelevant. What matters most to the economy’s growth rate is the total amount of deficit reduction, not the means of achieving it. On that score, things could have turned out a lot worse. The economy would have fallen into a recession in the first half if the scheduled fiscal cliff measures had gone fully into effect. Assuming House Republicans don’t achieve big spending cuts in March, economists look for 2013 growth of about 2 percent.

Strangely enough, then, congressional gridlock may have kept lawmakers from doing even more damage. Republicans managed to stave off big tax hikes, and Democrats have so far prevented big spending cuts. As a result, the U.S. was spared a British- or Greek-style dose of austerity. What’s normally a recipe for irresponsibility is helpful in this depressed economy, when the greatest danger is being overly virtuous. But the risk of screwing things up remains as long as the recovery is fragile and austerians are fired up. As Senator Joe Manchin III, a freshman Democrat from West Virginia, put it shortly before the new year: “Something has gone terribly wrong when the biggest threat to our American economy is the American Congress.”

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Israeli-Palestinian clashes erupt in West Bank

TAMOUN, West Bank (AP) — An arrest raid by undercover Israeli soldiers disguised as vegetable vendors ignited rare clashes in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, residents said, leaving at 10 Palestinians wounded.

Israeli army raids into Palestinian areas to seize activists and militants are fairly common. The raids are normally coordinated with Palestinian security forces, and suspects are usually apprehended without violence.

The clashes began early Tuesday after Israeli forces disguised as merchants in a vegetable truck arrested one man. Regular army forces then entered the town, prompting youths to hurl rocks to try to prevent more arrests.

Israeli forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition as youths set tires and bins on fire to block the passage of military vehicles. In several hours of clashes, dozens of masked youths hid behind makeshift barriers, hurling rocks and firebombs at soldiers.

Faris Bisharat, a resident of Tamoun, said 10 men were wounded, some by live fire. Bisharat said the wanted men belong to Islamic Jihad, a violent group sworn to Israel’s destruction. It wasn’t clear how many men Israeli forces sought to arrest. There were no immediate details on how seriously the 10 were hurt.

The Israeli military said it arrested a “terrorist affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group.” It said two soldiers were injured during the raid.

The fighting, which broke out in several parts of the town of some 8,000 people, were a rare, angry response. It was also unusual for Israeli forces to use live fire toward Palestinian demonstrators. Israel says it uses live fire only in extremely dangerous situations.

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Your Snapchats aren’t safe: How to secretly save videos from Snapchat or Facebook’s ‘Poke’

Argue though its executives might, Snapchat is good for two things: sending photos and videos of yourself making stupid faces, and sending photos and videos of yourself naked. The latter, of course, is the more compelling function since that is exactly what the app was designed for. When users send pictures or videos, the recipient can only view them for a set amount of time before they “self-destruct.” Yes, a recipient can take a screenshot but the sender is automatically alerted when that occurs — then, as the saying goes, fool me once… As it turns out, however, Snapchat users (and users of “Poke,” Facebook’s (FB) Snapchat ripoff) can easily save photos and full-length videos received through the service without the sender ever knowing.

[More from BGR: Five tech resolutions for 2013]

As recently relayed by BuzzFeed’s Katie Notopoulos, saving photos and videos from Snapchat or Poke is as easy as connecting a phone to a computer and opening a file browser. The file browser is free and the “trick” requires no jailbreak or any other kind of hack.

[More from BGR: Can Samsung survive without Android?]

Start by leaving the photos and videos you receive in Snapchat or Poke unopened; as soon as a file is viewed, the countdown to its deletion begins.

Then simply connect to a computer and open a free iPhone file explorer like i-FunBox. Open the “User Applications” folder, navigate to the “Snapchat” entry and voilà, all of the photos and videos you have received and not yet opened are available to be copied to your computer’s hard drive.

Then go back and view them normally in the app and the sender will be none the wiser.

The file path is a bit different for Facebook’s Poke app but the end result is the same.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Low-cost Chinese film sets new record

BEIJING (AP) — A low-budget, domestically produced comedy has unexpectedly become the highest-grossing Chinese film to date.

Chinese state media say the wacky road movie “Lost in Thailand” has grossed more than 1 billion yuan ($ 160 million) since its Dec. 12 debut. The official Xinhua News Agency, citing an independent monitor of box office figures, said Wednesday that it also beat James Cameron‘s “Titanic” in 3-D, the most popular foreign film in 2012, in Chinese theaters.

Set in Thailand, the film tells the story of two businessmen who go searching for their boss in the north, and then link up with a tourist eager to explore the country. It is filled with slapstick humor and action scenes.

The previous record for a domestic film was 726 million yuan set by “Painted Skin 2.”

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Women Lose Half Their Weight: How They Did It

At 25 years old and 288 pounds, Ashley Donahoo was depressed.

“I was unhappy with my job, I was unhappy with the direction my life was going, and I had a hard time enjoying the little things that my kids wanted to do,” the 27-year-old mother of two from Pace, Fla., said. “My health was failing. My doctor told me that he didn’t think I was going to make it to 30 if I kept on [this way]. … It kept getting worse and worse.”

Donahoo was concerned, but it was her faithful husband, David, who pushed her on a path to health, starting with a walk around the block.

“His heart was breaking for me,” she said. “And he saw how unhappy I was, and he came to me and said, ‘We’re going to go for a walk.’  And I was, like, ‘No, we’re not.’”

Her husband won that battle, and on the walk, she started thinking about her own choices and future.

“The realization hit me that I made this choice.  I made this choice to get where I am right now.  So I’m going to start making a different choice,” she said.   ”I put my health and myself on back burner, and I think … it had all caught up to me.”

Jumpstart Your Weight Loss: CLICK HERE to Ask a Celebrity Trainer a Question!

Like Donahoo, Caroline Jhingory reached a similar eye-opening realization about her weight.

“I looked in the mirror one day and just realized I didn’t recognize the person that was staring back at me,” said Jhingory, 32, of Washington, D.C.

Jhingory’s struggles with her weight began early. At age 8, she weighed 120 pounds. Taunted by her peers, Jhingory was enrolled in a medical weight loss program, but it didn’t work because she would sneak junk food like candy bars.

“I found a way to be a food hustler and get whatever food I wanted,” she said. “Not only did I spend two decades of my life morbidly obese. I spent two decades of my life being taunted and teased in every environment. I never went to prom. I never had dates. I couldn’t ride a roller coaster because the safety bar wouldn’t go over my stomach.”

Jhingory remained heavy until college, when she tipped the scales at 303 pounds and started feeling self-conscious in her new environment.

“I felt like I had a moment when all these difficult experiences were a huge pause button on my life. I finally said to myself, ‘I’m tired of this. I want to have a normal life.’”

Jhingory started walking everywhere. Then, she took up a daily cardio regimen to shed the weight, and she rid her pantry of tempting snack foods she once binged on. Now 149 pounds, she has reclaimed her shape and kept off the weight.

Jhingory’s amazing transformation, along with Donahoo’s and other weight-loss success stories, were spotlighted in the “Half Their Size” feature in the latest issue of People magazine.

RELATED: Is Being Overweight Really Bad For You?

Donahoo cut out the late-night binges that brought her down and, thanks to her strong support system, lost 137 pounds. She credited her weight loss success to tracking her food and exercise on livestrong.com and running. She has run two 5Ks.

Leah Fernandez of Atlanta found herself at 251 pounds after two pregnancies. The baby weight stuck and she tended to eat emotionally.

“I wanted the food,” she said. “It made me feel good, and so I ate it.”

But it was the motivation to be there for her children that helped her turn it all around.

“Thinking about going out to the park with my kids felt like work to me, you know?  And at some point I realized that’s ridiculous. Not only am I cheating myself but I’m cheating my kids of me,” she said.

Fernandez turned to Jenny Craig in March 2011 and hasn’t looked back. Since then, she has lost half her weight by staying active with her kids and incorporating walking into her lifestyle.

“I’m getting my groove back.  Leah’s getting her groove back,” she said.

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READ MORE: 138 Pound Weight Loss Changes Woman’s Life

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With Interest Rates Near Zero, What’s a Saver to Do?

Paul Hernandez describes himself as “one of those people who believe in standing on your own two feet.” At age 48 he lost a job as a contract programmer for Princess Cruise Lines, and he hasn’t been employed since. For a long time that was fine. His wife was earning a good salary; they lived frugally, childless and debt-free; and they earned a steady investment income from conservative assets such as bank certificates of deposit. Now things are getting tighter. As expected, his wife retired. Unexpectedly, their income from investments has plummeted because of falling interest rates. Hernandez, now 60, blames the Federal Reserve for hurting savers like himself by lowering rates in an effort to spur economic growth.

“I’ve sent e-mails to [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke. I know he doesn’t read them,” says Hernandez. “We were always believers in base hits, accumulating your money slowly. That’s all being ripped out from under us. In this bizarro world, the people who didn’t carry a lot of debt are paying for it all. And it seems like nobody cares.”

Hernandez has a point. Interest rates haven’t been this low in the U.S. in at least a century. A 10-year Treasury note yields just 1.7 percent a year, and a one-month Treasury bill has an annualized return averaging just 0.05 percent over the past year. That’s great for the world’s biggest borrower, the U.S. government, but it’s hell on savers. At that rate, an investor in one-month T-bills could double his or her money in—wait for it—1,387 years. Since inflation is running at close to 2 percent, you’re actually losing wealth by putting your money into Treasury securities.

Moving your money abroad may not help, either. Fourteen countries, with a combined equity and debt market capitalization of $ 65 trillion, have near-zero short-term interest rates, says Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC) Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett.

Senior citizens suffer the most from low rates. People 75 and older get 8 percent of their income from interest, dividends, and rents, according to an analysis of government data by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. People younger than 44 get less than 1 percent of their income from those sources.

What can savers do about this Fed-induced predicament besides complain? Hernandez’s choice is to stick with the safest, shortest-term securities—low yields be damned. That strategy may make sense if you’re going to take money out soon, or if you’re so risk-averse you sell in a panic whenever the market hiccups. Hernandez, who lives in Henderson, Nev., shies away from riskier assets because he thinks the Fed is manipulating markets. “I believe we’re sitting on a house of cards,” he says. “Every bit of our money is going into CDs and money markets now.”

For most people, though, being ultra-cautious won’t produce the growth needed to pay for the children’s college or a golden retirement. The Federal Reserve, by pinning short-term rates to the floor, is effectively pushing you to take some chances with your money. “Don’t fight the Fed,” says Larry Elkin, a certified financial planner and president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group in Scarsdale, N.Y. “You’re bringing a rock to a gunfight.”

If your goal is income, alternatives include dividend-paying stocks—the average yield for stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 2.2 percent as of Dec. 12—or real estate investment trusts, which invest in properties such as office buildings and also boast dividends. A Bloomberg REIT index had a 3.5 percent dividend yield as of Dec. 12. Mortgage-backed securities, emerging-market debt, and high-yield bonds have seen the biggest percentage gains in assets lately. Remember, spreading the money among asset classes will reduce the fluctuations in your portfolio.

In the fixed-income world, corporate and municipal bonds offer better yields than Treasuries. The FINRA-Bloomberg Active Investment Grade U.S. Corporate Bond Index yielded 3.4 percent on Dec. 12, 2.7 percentage points above the benchmark five-year Treasury note. You can also get some juice from munis, although not as much as usual: Their yields are at 47-year lows—3.3 percent as of Dec. 12, according to the Bond Buyer’s average for 20-year Aa2-rated general obligation bonds. If you do buy bonds, consider shorter maturities. They’ll lose less value if interest rates rise. Plus, as they mature you’ll have cash to pour into higher-yielding securities. Like it or not, this is not the time to make a living from clipping coupons.

The Fed has not suppressed interest rates this much for this long since 1942 to 1951. Under the control of the U.S. Department of the Treasury during that period, the Fed was ordered to make it easy for the government to borrow cheaply to pay off debt incurred in the war effort. Back then it kept long-term Treasury bonds at no more than 2.5 percent and short-term Treasury bills at no more than 0.375 percent, according to George Mason University economist Lawrence White.

Rates are even lower today. Bernanke knows he’s not popular with people trying to live off interest income. He’s heard the talk of “financial repression” and “the war on savers.” But he continues to argue that Zirp—zero-interest-rate policy—is the right medicine for the economy. And he’s taking his argument to the public.

Bernanke made his case on Oct. 1 in an address to 2,000 business leaders and investment advisers at a luncheon of the Economic Club of Indiana. Two weeks before, the Fed’s rate-setting committee announced it would buy $ 85 billion of bonds per month for as long as necessary “if the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially.” Wall Street wags immediately dubbed the open-ended commitment to quantitative easing “QE infinity.”

Bernanke acknowledged to the Indianapolis audience that low rates on savings “involved significant hardship for some,” while pointing out that “savers often wear many economic hats.” Low rates might hurt you as a saver but help you as a homeowner, business owner, stock investor, or jobholder. If the Fed pushed up interest rates prematurely, Bernanke said, “house prices might resume declines, the values of businesses large and small would drop, and, critically, unemployment would likely start to rise again.” He concluded: “Such outcomes would ultimately not be good for savers or anyone else.”

The audience was polite, not wowed. “He gave a vigorous defense,” says George Farra, a registered investment adviser and principal of Woodley Farra Manion Portfolio Management in Indianapolis who’s also treasurer of the Economic Club of Indiana. “I’m not sure it was convincing about zero percent for savers, but he went at it, that’s for sure.”

Many investors have resisted the Fed’s prodding to take more risk—and suffered as a result. Money flooded into low- or zero-yielding bank accounts last year after the Dodd-Frank act granted temporary unlimited FDIC insurance on bank deposits. (One question: How much money will leave the banks, and where will it go after Jan. 1, when $ 1.4 trillion in deposits above the $ 250,000 threshold become uninsured?) Since the stock market’s 2009 bottom, stock funds have captured only 11 percent of the inflows into open-ended U.S.-based mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, with the other 89 percent going into bond mutual funds and ETFs, according to Morningstar (MORN) data.

That means many investors have missed out on a huge bull market in equities. From its scary low on March 9, 2009, through Dec. 12, 2012, the S&P 500 doubled in value. Over that same period, the J.P. Morgan (JPM) U.S. Aggregate Bond Index returned just 28 percent.

Why are investors still seeking shelter in something that offers no significant shelter? Wishful thinking plays a part. “One of the things that we hear out of clients is, ‘Just give me a safe, high-yielding investment.’ We tell them, ‘That doesn’t exist,’ ” says William Allen, vice president for portfolio consulting at Schwab Private Client Investment Advisory (SCHW). “If you want pure safety you have to give up some yield, mostly all yield. We spend an awful lot of time trying to level-set investors”—that is, lower their expectations.

There’s also some anecdotal evidence that the Fed, far from enticing investors to take more risk, is inadvertently scaring them off. “Investors Not Acting in Their Own Best Interest” was the headline on a press release from State Street (STT), the big institutional bank. “Most retail investors believe preparing for retirement requires aggressive investing, yet 31 percent of their assets are in cash,” State Street’s Center for Applied Research think tank found in a survey. The Fed’s bold actions do not seem to have reassured investors. Rather, said State Street, “growing awareness of the financial system’s instability” is leading investors to seek safety at the expense of yield.

Savers and investors can’t change this state of affairs. What they can do is take advantage of it. Because your assets aren’t earning much, at least be sure that your liabilities aren’t costing much. Extinguish high-cost debt using cash or lower-cost debt, such as by using a home-equity line of credit to pay off credit cards or auto loans.

Remember, though: Some debt is good to have. If you have headroom on your home-equity line of credit and you think you might need a lot of cash in the next couple of years, pull out the cash now so there’s no risk the bank will freeze the home-equity line, advises Elkin of Palisades Hudson.

Extremophiles are tiny creatures that live in some of the world’s harshest environments, like volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean. For savers, today’s zero-rate world is the harshest of environments. The trick is to adapt to the circumstances and become a financial extremophile.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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UPDATE 7-Tennis-Auckland Classic women’s singles round 1 results

Jan 1 (Infostrada Sports) – Results from the Auckland Classic Women’s Singles Round 1 matches on Tuesday

2-Julia Goerges (Germany) beat Anastasija Sevastova (Latvia) 6-3 6-4

Marina Erakovic (New Zealand) beat Stephanie Dubois (Canada) 6-2 6-1

1-Agnieszka Radwanska (Poland) beat Greta Arn (Hungary) 6-2 6-2

8-Mona Barthel (Germany) beat Grace Min (U.S.) 6-1 6-3

6-Yaroslava Shvedova (Kazakhstan) beat Lara Arruabarrena Vecino (Spain) 6-3 6-2

Romina Oprandi (Switzerland) beat Nudnida Luangnam (Thailand) 6-0 6-2

Heather Watson (Britain) beat 5-Sorana Cirstea (Romania) 6-3 (Cirstea retired)

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Olympics, elections and horsing around in odd 2012

LONDON (Reuters) – Presidential preening, golden Olympic gaffes, a royal windfall for a skydiving British queen on her diamond jubilee and the endless end of days marked the odd stories in 2012 which pranced across the news in Gangnam Style.

The year opened with a tale that flocks of magpies and bears had been spotted in mourning for North Korea‘s “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his 20-something son Kim Jong-un.

Winter weather was so cold in Brussels that the Manneken-Pis, a bronze statue of a young boy urinating had to stop peeing because of sub-zero temperatures.

There was slightly warming news about Mondays in Germany, where crematoriums are struggling to adapt to an increasingly obese population and a boom in extra-large coffins.

“We burn particularly large coffins on Monday mornings when the ovens are cold,” one crematorium said.

In March Polish media reported that kite surfer Jan Lisewski fought off repeated shark attacks and overcame thirst and exhaustion in a two-day battle of survival on the Red Sea with just his trusty knife as protection.

“I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills.”

In other animal news, dairy cows across the world mourned the loss of “Jocko”, the world’s third most-potent breeding bull and Yvonne the German cow who evaded helicopter searches and dodged hunters landed a film deal: “Cow on the Run”.

A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile after it attacked him in his rice paddy.

“I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry,” Mohamed Salmo Miya said.

A scathing resignation letter of a Goldman Sachs executive published in the New York Times inspired a sheaf of online spoofs, including Star Wars villain Darth Vader.

“The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore,” Vader wrote in a published letter.

Austerity in Europe saw a once-thriving Greek sex industry become the latest victim of the country’s debt crisis with Greeks spending less on erotic toys, pornography and lingerie.

But lust appeared to be in the rudest of health elsewhere.

Turkish emergency workers rescued an inflatable sex doll floating in the Black Sea and a German disc jockey vowed to press charges against a woman who locked him in her apartment and ravaged him for hours until he rang the police.

“She was sex mad and there was no way out of the flat,” Dieter S. told police.

@ROYALFETUS

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 60th year on the throne with Diamond Jubilee celebrations that saw a 1,000-ship rain-sodden flotilla sail down the River Thames, a massive party in front of Buckingham Palace, street parties across the country and a spoof incarnation of her majesty on Twitter.

“OK, fire up the Bentley. Let’s rock,” tweeted “Elizabeth Windsor“, the comic online alter ego of the British monarch in a typical tweet from the spoof Twitter account @Queen_UK, a virtual monarch with a razor-sharp wit and a penchant for gin.

And Twitter positively exploded with spoof royal accounts later in the year when Elizabeth’s grandson William and his wife Kate announced she was pregnant with a future monarch.

“I may not have bones yet, but I’m already more important than everyone reading this,” was the tweet from @RoyalFetus.

Leadership and change was a theme which ran through a year in which socialist Francois Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Mimi the clown to become French president, Vladimir Putin was elected Russian president again and U.S. President Barack Obama won re-election over Republican Mitt Romney.

Amid the tight election race, Obama met a gaffe-prone Romney for an exchange at a charity dinner ahead of the November poll, where America’s first black president poked fun at Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood for lecturing an empty chair as if it were Obama during the Republican convention.

“Please take your seats,” Obama told the crowd, “or else Clint Eastwood will yell at them.”

“THE MODFATHER”

Sporting news was dominated by the London Olympics during the summer, where the opening ceremony included a vignette of Queen Elizabeth being escorted by James Bond before apparently skydiving into the Olympic stadium for her arrival.

“Good evening Mr. Bond,” was her only line.

Olympic embarrassments were few, but they began early with organizers forced into apologies for displaying the South Korean flag on a video screen for North Korea‘s women’s soccer team.

British cycling sensation Bradley “the Modfather” Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, sparking a craze among fans for cutout cardboard sideburns modeled on his own and shouting “here Wiggo” as he raced to Olympic gold.

London’s eccentric and loquacious Mayor Boris Johnson fell rather awkwardly silent when he got stuck dangling from a zip wire, waving two Union flags in drizzling rain.

Olympic chiefs urged youthful athletes to drink “sensibly”.

But there was anything but restraint for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who declared an early night at one point only to be photographed later with three members of the Swedish women’s handball team. Early one Sunday morning Bolt also dazzled dancers at a London night club with a turn in the DJ booth.

“I am a legend,” Bolt shouted out to a packed dance floor from the decks with his arms raised in the air.

Towards the close of the year, tens of thousands of mystics, hippies and tourists celebrated in the shadow of ancient Maya pyramids in southeastern Mexico as the Earth survived a day billed by doomsday theorists as the end of the world.

“It’s pure Hollywood,” said Luis Mis Rodriguez, 45, a Maya selling obsidian figurines and souvenirs.

Finally, a chubby, rapping singer with slicked-back hair and a tacky suit became the latest musical sensation to burst upon the world from South Korea, via a YouTube music video that has been seen more than a billion times.

Decked out in a bow tie and suit jackets varying from pink to baby blue, as well as a towel for one sequence set in a sauna, Psy busts funky moves based on horse-riding in venues ranging from playgrounds to subways.

The video by Psy has been emulated by everyone from Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei to students at Britain’s elite Eton College, gurning politicians, spotty teens and embarrassing dads worldwide.

“My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it,” Psy told Reuters.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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‘Rings’ trilogy sound editor Hopkins dies in NZ

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Oscar-winning sound editor Mike Hopkins, who worked on the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and other Peter Jackson films, has died in a rafting accident in New Zealand. He was 53.

Hopkins drowned on Sunday when his inflatable raft capsized during a flash flood in a river on New Zealand‘s North Island, police senior Sgt. Carolyn Watson said. His wife survived.

The New Zealand Herald newspaper quoted “Rings” director Peter Jackson as saying many actors, directors and film crew members who were lucky enough to work with Hopkins would miss him deeply.

“Mike was a very genuine, caring and warm-hearted guy with a great sense of humor,” Jackson said.

A native New Zealander, Hopkins shared Oscars with sound editing partner Ethan Van der Ryn in 2006 for “King Kong” and in 2003 for “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.” They also were nominated for 2007′s “Transformers.”

Hopkins also was sound editor on the two other “Rings” films and had worked on earlier Jackson movies including “Heavenly Creatures” and “The Frighteners.”

The Herald reported a family celebration of Hopkins’ life was planned on Thursday.

A river contractor, Bruce Slater, and his son used a jet boat to rescue Hopkins’ wife. Nicci Hopkins had been in the Waiohine River two hours and was clinging to a ledge in a narrow part of the gorge too dangerous for bigger boats or a helicopter.

Watson called the Slaters heroic. Slater told Fairfax New Zealand the flash flood raised the river 2 to 3 meters (9.8 feet) while the rafters were in the water.

“If they’d been half an hour earlier, they would have been clear of the gorge,” he said. And a half hour later, the water levels would have been noticeably dangerous before the rafters launched, Slater said.

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