Despite topping power lists, Michelle Obama has admitted that she more often feels like a swan: "calm and serene above water - but we're paddling like mad, going crazy underneath, trying to look smooth".

The First Lady's name has popped up on Forbes' "most powerful women" list, People magazine's "most beautiful" list and Time's "most influential" list, among others, since her husband, Barack Obama, assumed office as US president year ago.

Her every word, move, bite, gesture, dress and shoe has been analysed and second-guessed.

"It wasn't something that I was prepared for," she admitted last week as she looked back on her first year as First Lady.

But asked if she had any regrets, the First Lady said no, and vowed to expand her role in the coming year.

"I'm a 110-percenter," she said. "And, yes, we can do more."

Mrs Obama, a 46-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer, has spent the past year settling her family into a new life in a new town, trying to avoid creating controversy for her already burdened husband and figuring out where to make her mark.

"Our goal was to do everything that was done before, so that we'd know what it was, and uphold those traditions, but try to tweak it," she told reporters recently.

She has championed healthy eating with her White House kitchen garden, promoted the unsuccessful Olympic bid of her hometown of Chicago, and has been photographed hugging dozens of people - including the Queen, in a bold gesture that was widely criticised.

Her wardrobe - mixing top designers and off-the-rack cardigans - has won her accolades, and censure, from the fashion world.

But asked what she is most proud of in the past year, she answers without hesitating: "That my kids are sane."

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a multimedia journalist at the China Daily Web site.)

(Agencies)