• Business Insider spoke with professional stylists about 2025 jewelry trends.
• They predicted that watches and rings would be the center of attention this year.
• However, the quiet-luxury trend is replacing big, branded pieces.

Jewelry can be just as important as clothing when it comes to curating a personal style.

Although some aspects of the accessory are more personal and subjective — wedding bands, family heirlooms, etc — there are still overarching trends that rotate in and out of style.

Business Insider spoke with three professional stylists to get their take on all the jewelry trends that will be popular and out in 2025.

• I'm raising a teenager, and I often feel that none of my choices is right.
• Parenting right now often feels like the "Barbie" monologue where we can't do anything right.
• I wonder what he's going to remember as an adult and what he's going to forget.

My teenage son was about to miss a school deadline. We'd spent the last few days mapping out a plan: breaking down the project into manageable pieces, setting reminders, checking in here and there. But when the final weekend of the due date arrived, Joey wasn't working on it. He wasn't panicking, either. He was on his phone.

I stood in the kitchen with my coffee, frozen in that familiar parenting dance. Should I demand he work on the assignment now, or should I stay quiet, letting him manage his own time?

Neither choice felt right.

If I stepped in, would I be an overbearing helicopter parent hovering too close? But if I let it go, would I be failing him by taking away adult support to guide his follow-through practice?

And then a bigger, deeper question that always surfaces for me: In the grand scheme of parenting and all that's happening in the world, is this even something worthy of such contemplation?

Parenting in today's day and age feels like an impossible task.

Parenting feels like the famous 'Barbie' monologue

The iconic "Barbie" monologue still lingers with me even more than a year after its release — not because it's about parenting (it's not) but because Greta Gerwig gave words to something both deeply personal and undeniably universal. The monologue, powerfully delivered by America Ferrera, calls out the contradictory expectations and impossible standards placed on women.

I think parenting is like that, too.

It is literally impossible to be a parent. You love your child so deeply, and it's heartbreaking to worry that it's not enough. Like, we need to be extraordinary at this difficult thing all the time, no matter what, and somehow, there's always someone saying we're doing it wrong.

You're supposed to raise independent kids, but not so independent that they feel abandoned. You want them to be fully themselves but also protect them from a world that isn't understanding. You have to discipline them, but not too harshly, or you'll damage them. Be patient but not permissive. Cherish every moment, but don't forget to think about and prepare them for the future.

You have to balance being their authority figure and their empathetic listener. You need to stay calm, even when you're completely exhausted. You're supposed to love your career, but never let it interfere with your family. You're supposed to provide them with every opportunity but also don't spoil them.

You can't admit how hard it is because that might make it seem like you don't love them enough. And if they struggle in any way — socially, academically, emotionally — that's your fault. Didn't you read the right parenting books? Take the right classes? Use the right tone?

And, on top of all that, how do we know which moments will matter most?

I wonder what he's going to remember about me as a parent

I wonder what Joey will remember from these years and what he won't.

I think about my own childhood and how certain moments stayed while others quietly fell away. I remember an afternoon when the kids in my neighborhood made fun of me for not knowing how to ride my bike without training wheels. My dad shooed them away, and even though I didn't magically learn to ride that day, I felt protected and watched over.

Years later, I was in a minor fender bender on my way to high school. Still a bit rattled after exchanging insurance information, I drove home instead of heading to school and called my dad. He explained that this wasn't a time to retreat but a time to keep going. So, to school I went.

Or the night my mom stayed up late helping me clean my room, even though I was the one who made the mess. I was so overwhelmed I couldn't start, and instead of lecturing me, she sat on the floor and helped. On the flip side, I knew better than to call her at work if I forgot a school assignment at home; those consequences were mine to handle.

I will always wonder if I've done enough as a parent

The truth is, I don't think I'll ever stop second-guessing myself as a parent. I'll always wonder if I should have done more or less, if I should have stepped in earlier or held back longer. Or is my perspective too insular in proportion to the external happenings in the world?

What I'm trying to hold onto is that raising a perfect kid in an imperfect world surely can't be the goal.

My parents' style was both hands-on and hands-off. Now that I'm a parent, I understand the seemingly infinite number of factors that influence parenting choices. I have a hunch my parents didn't have a precise formula for when to use which approach. What I am certain about is that my parents did their best with each decision.

That's what we're all doing, right? Our best at any given moment. That's what I can commit to: showing up every day, doing my best in each particular moment, warts and all. I hope that's enough.

"I thought it was so sweet and made sense since these two are practically brothers," the dog owner said.

NASCAR has implemented new 2025 rules, including clearer race manipulation definitions.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has outlined a new template for companies to make up with President-elect Trump and MAGA.

Why it matters: Meta did this with a methodical striptease over nine days, capturing massive public and MAGA attention.

• "This is speaking Trump's love language," a transition source told us.

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Zuckerberg had been considering some of the moves for years. Almost all had been in the works for months. But sources tell us Meta deliberately packaged them all up for detonation over nine days to maximize the pop for Trump.

• "It's hard to break through in this media environment," said a source familiar with the strategy. "It sends a signal."

Here's the Meta formula:

• Put a Trump friend on your board (Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White).
• Promote a prominent Republican as your chief global affairs officer (Joel Kaplan, succeeding liberal-friendly Nick Clegg, president of global affairs).
• Align your philosophy with Trump's on a big-ticket public issue (free speech over fact-checking).
• Announce your philosophical change on Fox News, hoping Trump is watching. In this case, he was. "Meta, Facebook, I think they've come a long way," Trump said at a Mar-a-Lago news conference, adding of Kaplan's appearance on the "Fox and Friends" curvy couch: "The man was very impressive."
• Take a big public stand on a favorite issue for Trump and MAGA (rolling back DEI programs).
• Amplify that stand in an interview with Fox News Digital. (Kaplan again!)
• Go on Joe Rogan's podcast and blast President Biden for censorship.
• And light up social media with all the fireworks.

Between the lines: Love it or hate it, the strategy seemed to work brilliantly. Trump praised Meta. Rogan hailed Zuck.

• House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has aggressively investigated Big Tech, said he hopes other companies "follow the lead of X and Meta in upholding freedom of speech online."

Behind the scenes: After visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago in November, Zuckerberg decided to relax Meta's speech policies and "asked a small team to carry out his goals within weeks," The New York Times reported.

• Knowing the change would be contentious, Zuckerberg "assembled a team of no more than a dozen close advisers and lieutenants, including Joel Kaplan ... Kevin Martin, the head of U.S. policy; and David Ginsberg, the head of communications. Mr. Zuckerberg insisted on no leaks," The Times added.
• Zuckerberg was back at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, a day after taping with Rogan in Austin.

The big picture: Every company in America is watching. We can expect some to copy Zuckerberg — after Elon Musk showed the way.

• Shifts this fast are rare. And rarely isolated.

What we're watching: Backlash — internal and external — is already brewing.

• Training materials for Meta's new speech policies list examples of permissible attacks against various identity groups.
• Roy Austin Jr., who built and led a small civil rights team inside Meta beginning in 2021, announced Friday he was leaving the company.
• Biden criticized Zuckerberg's fact-checking reversal as "shameful" at a new conference Friday.

The bottom line: Alex Bruesewitz — CEO of X Strategies LLC, and trusted adviser to the Trump campaign on alternative media — told us companies are either "a. Finally recognizing that 'wokeness' is a cancer, or b. Strategically adapting to the political climate and pandering to Republicans now that we are in power."

• "Only time will tell which is the true motivation," Bruesewitz said. "Regardless, MAGA is winning and will continue to win!"

Axios' Zachary Basu contributed reporting.

President-elect Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Israel on Saturday to push for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, Israeli officials said.

Why it matters: Witkoff's traveled to Israel from Qatar as part of a last-minute effort by Trump to press all parties involved in the negotiations to conclude the deal before Jan. 20.

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• Trump has threatened there would be "hell to pay in the Middle East" if Hamas didn't release the hostages by the time he is inaugurated.

Behind the scenes: A senior Israeli official said Witkoff delivered a message to the prime minister of Qatar in their meeting in Doha on Friday that Trump wants to see a deal within days.

• Witkoff is expected to deliver the same message to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they meet later on Saturday.
• Witkoff declined to comment.

Driving the news: Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediation are still ongoing in Doha.

• President Biden's top Middle East adviser Brett McGurk is in Doha and is involved in the negotiations. U.S. officials say McGurk and Witkoff are coordinating their efforts.
• About 98 hostages are still held by Hamas in Gaza, among them seven Americans. Roughly half of the hostages are believed to be still alive, according to Israeli intelligence, including three Americans.
• If an agreement is reached, the first phase could include the release of 33 hostages — some who are still alive and some who are dead.
• The first phase is also expected to include a ceasefire in Gaza for a period of between six and seven weeks and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including those who murdered Israelis.

State of play: White House spokesman John Kirby said on Friday that progress has been made in the negotiations and that a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal is possible before Jan. 20.

• "But more compromises are needed," Kirby said.
• Israeli officials said on Saturday that there has been progress in the talks over the last 24 hours.
• They said Netanyahu has to decide whether to send the directors of the Israeli Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence agencies to Doha to join the talks and try to close the deal.

What they're saying: CIA director Bill Burns told NPR in an interview publish on Friday that the hostages are held "in hellish conditions in tunnels and Gaza civilians are also in hellish conditions and suffering terribly."

• "So there's every reason for political leaders to recognize that enough is enough. That perfect is rarely on the menu in the Middle East and it's time to make a deal," he said.

• I visited Lapland, Finland's northernmost region, and stayed in an igloo for $150 a night.
• It was much cheaper than other similar accommodations I found in the area.
• The outside temperature was below freezing, but I slept extremely well and had a blast.

I've always dreamed of staying in an igloo. The novelty experience just seems perfectly nostalgic to me — the sort of thing you conjure up in childhood but forget to tick off your list as an adult.

When I booked a trip to Lapland in December, I knew I wanted to make it happen.

Unfortunately, most igloo stays are out of my budget, especially in December, when prices tend to go up due to higher demand. Everything I saw was either close to $800 a night or booked out months in advance.

I almost resigned myself to failure until I stumbled across Lucky Ranch, a family-owned lodge just outside Pyhä-Luosto National Park on the shores of the serene Lake Pyhäjärvi.

Stays in its elaborately carved igloos were available for just $150 a night — and they included breakfast. I couldn't believe my luck.

• Dana Bull plans to optimize her real estate portfolio in 2025 rather than acquiring more properties.
• She aims to increase revenue by focusing on insurance, taxes, and renovation costs.
• With insurance costs on the rise, any investor can benefit from shopping around.

Dana Bull isn't looking to acquire any more properties in 2025.

The experienced investor built wealth by buying primarily multi-family properties in Massachusetts. She's also a real-estate agent and consultant, and a mother of four. Between her various work projects and renovating her primary residence, she says she has plenty to keep her busy in 2025.

While she's not expanding her doors, she still expects to grow her revenue in the new year.

Any investor can benefit from optimizing what they already own, said Bull: "If you're not going to buy right now — for personal reasons or you just don't like the interest rates or whatever is going on — this could be a good year to just focus on your business, your expenses, and tighten up what you already have."

Specifically, she's looking to optimize in three categories, which could improve her returns significantly.

1. Insurance

Like many investors and homeowners, Bull has seen her insurance rates rise over the past couple of years.

The general trend is that "insurance is harder to get and it's more expensive," she said. "That cost for me has just jumped. It's a big line item. I have had the same provider for the past 10 years, and I need to just go out there and procure quotes and make sure that I'm not getting overcharged for what's being covered."

It can be time-consuming to keep track of each policy and its changes, especially if you own a lot of properties.

"I feel like it's the wild, wild west," said Bull of navigating the insurance world. "Many times, a program that we have a property covered by will just be dropped, or they'll no longer cover that property for reason X, Y, or Z, so it's like this revolving door of making sure that the properties all have coverage — and the right coverage."

She says she's been more "passive" about optimizing insurance in the past, but now that prices are soaring, she plans to shop around and do her due diligence in 2025.

2. Taxes

In addition to insurance, her property taxes have gone up.

"The tax rate has not gone up, but the value of the properties has gone up so significantly that you're just paying thousands more a year for taxes," explained Bull. One of her properties, for example, will cost an extra $2,000 a year. "If I multiply that across my whole portfolio, that's a lot of money."

If you think your property is overvalued, you can appeal your property assessment.

"I think I have a few properties that are overvalued," said Bull. "Some aren't, so obviously there's nothing to do there. But if I can make a case and bring in comps and show them this is an overvaluation and now I'm being taxed higher than I probably should, I have found in the past that if you're just a squeaky wheel, they'll work with you."

3. Renovation costs

Bull has seen the availability and cost of hiring contractors vary dramatically over her investing career.

"When I first started in real estate, which was at the tail end of the recession, contractors were out of work, and they needed work, so the pricing was way different 10 years ago than it is today," she said. "And then during the pandemic, everybody was renovating their home and contractors had such a surplus of work that they could basically charge whatever they wanted, and you were going to pay it because you were desperate."

Heading into 2025, "the tides are kind of turning," she said, in that contractors won't be able to pick their price.

It's worth it to shop around, said Bull, adding that you may be surprised by the varying prices you receive. For example, she had to replace three roofs for one of her multi-family properties: "One quote came in at $30,000, another came in at $21,000, and then another came in at $12,000. And I'm reviewing the quotes and pretty much everything is the same. The product is the same."

While meeting with multiple contractors can be "a pain in the butt," she acknowledged, it could mean tens of thousands of dollars in savings.

This week's Pet of the Week is Archie, a springer spaniel with a competitive spirit and plenty of energy.

Tax reliefs will help thousands of Los Angeles residents who have lost their homes and businesses after the wildfires to rebuild.

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review a challenge to the Affordable Care Act's requirement that insurers cover certain recommended preventive services at no cost.

Why it matters: Eliminating the requirement could limit access to services like cancer screenings, preventive medications for heart disease, behavioral health counseling and HIV drugs known as PrEP.

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• The timing of the high court review puts the legal defense of the ACA mandate in the hands of the incoming Trump administration.

Zoom in: The case takes up whether the coverage requirement, based on the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, is invalid because the panel lacked authority since its members weren't Senate-confirmed.

• Two Christian-owned companies and several individuals sued the federal government on religious freedom grounds in 2020 over the requirement that their employer-sponsored insurance cover no-cost preventive medicines for HIV.
• A federal judge in Texas in 2022 ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and blocked the government from requiring insurers to provide free coverage of recommended services.
• The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year agreed with some of the arguments but overturned the nationwide injunction, only blocking the requirement for the companies and individuals who brought the case.

The Biden administration and the challengers each asked the Supreme Court to review that mixed ruling. The administration argued it called into question insurers' legal duty to cover task force recommendations without cost-sharing.

• Allowing employers to exclude PrEP over religious objections could open the door to objections over other covered services, including vaccines, KFF has noted.

• The war in Ukraine has given rise to explosive-packed drones modified with fiber-optic cables.
• These drones are dangerous, as they can't be jammed with electronic warfare and are harder to detect.
• But one Ukrainian company is developing a solution so front-line soldiers can find the drones.

Russian forces are using explosive-packed drones connected to their operators by fiber-optic cables to deliver unjammable precision strikes on Ukrainian troops and military equipment, and Kyiv is looking for a fix to fight back.

Fiber-optic drones have been increasingly appearing in combat over about the last year, and they're a challenge. These drones are dangerous because they can't be jammed with traditional electronic warfare and are difficult to defend against, highlighting the need for a solution.

The drones are "a real problem" because "we cannot detect and intercept them" electronically, Yuriy, a major in an electronic-warfare unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, told Business Insider. "If we can see, we can fight."

The problem is one that the defense industry is looking into closely. Kara Dag, for instance, is an American-Ukrainian technology company that's developing software and hardware to defend against Russian drones for the military and working on a solution, but it's still early days.

The company's chief technology officer, who goes by the pseudonym John for security purposes, said the ongoing conflict is a "war of drones." He told BI Ukraine had managed this fight well with jamming techniques, but Russia has found ways to slip past some of its defenses.

Fiber-optic drones, which Russia appears to have started flying into battle last spring, are first-person view, or FPV, drones, but rather than rely on a signal connection, they are wired with cables that preserve a stable connection. As a result, these drones are resistant to electronic warfare, like radio frequency jammers, and produce high-quality video transmissions.

In August, combat footage from Russian fiber-optic drones began to circulate, indicating a more lasting presence on the battlefield. Now, both militaries are using these drones.

Fiber-optic drones are highly dangerous, John said, as they can fly in tunnels, close to the ground, through valleys, and in other areas where other drones might lose connection with their operators. They are also tough to detect because they don't emit any radio signals.

Russia can use these drones to destroy Ukrainian armored vehicles and study its defensive positions, he said. Since they don't have bandwidth problems, these drones "can transmit very high-quality picture and they literally see everything."

The drones aren't without their disadvantages, though. Yuriy shared that the fiber-optic drones are slower than the untethered FPV drones and unable to make sharp changes in direction. He said that Russia does not have too many of these drones, either, nor does it use them in every direction of the front lines. But where they are used, they're a problem.

Because jamming doesn't work on fiber-optic drones, there are efforts underway to explore other options for stopping these systems, such as audio and visual detection. But this kind of technology can be expensive and hard to manufacture.

John said that the company has developed a low-cost solution to find fiber-optic drones. One element of this system is an array of dozens of microphones that can be focused on one point in the sky to listen for any nearby drones. The second element is an unfocused infrared laser that highlights any object in a certain area of the sky while a camera records any reflected light coming back.

It's a single device that can be placed around a kilometer from troop positions. John said the device is in lab testing, and the next step is to deploy it in real combat conditions on the front lines next month. The plan is to eventually produce several thousand of these devices every month.

The introduction of fiber-optic drones into battle — and Ukraine's subsequent efforts to counter them — underscores how both Moscow and Kyiv are constantly trying to innovate with uncrewed systems before the enemy can adapt, a trend that has been evident throughout the war.

In a previous interview with BI, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, described the technology and drone race playing out in this fight as a "cat-and-mouse game." He said that Kyiv is trying to stay several steps ahead of Moscow at all times.

The Ukrainian military said last month that it was testing fiber-optic drones, adding that "FPV drones with this technology are becoming a big problem for the enemy on the front line."

On Tuesday, a Ukrainian government platform that facilitates innovation within the country's defense industry shared new footage of fiber-optic drone demonstrations on social media. Russia, if it's not already, may soon find itself working to counter these new drones as well.

Princess Kate went into mom mode when a young Princess Charlotte began to struggle during a royal engagement.

Managers said they wouldn't hire recent graduates as they were unmotivated, had poor communication skills and lacked work ethic.

Visa programs are seeing changes, with more potentially on the way. But U.S. employers are seeking other ways to access international talent.

They say it's hard to turn a battleship around, but Mark Zuckerberg just about-faced his globe-spanning, $1.5 trillion-value, 3 billion-user company — transforming Meta from a bastion of Silicon Valley's socially progressive neoliberalism into a full-on MAGA hive.

Why it matters: After Zuckerberg's embrace of Trump and Trumpism, Silicon Valley is holding its breath to see whether a whole row of tech dominoes is about to fall in the same direction.

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Some early signs of wobble:

• Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have all lined up to give $1 million each to the Trump inauguration. (Apple's donation came personally from CEO Tim Cook.)
• Amazon put $40 million behind a Melania Trump documentary.

State of play: So far, while Meta's competitors have ritualistically expressed their willingness to work with the new administration, none of them has gone as far as Zuckerberg in donning the corporate equivalent of a MAGA hat.

• This week he announced Meta was ending its fact-checking program; loosening restrictions on hate speech; and shutting down the company's diversity efforts.

Publicly traded companies with billions of customers generally try not to alienate any large bloc of the public. Becoming closely aligned with either side of the U.S.'s red/blue divide risks limiting a business's market reach.

• Until now, Elon Musk has been the striking exception to this rule. Zuckerberg makes two — and his moves open the door wider for anyone else who wants to emulate them.

Yes, but: Zuckerberg, unlike his rival CEOs, has absolute voting control of his company.

• As he said in a three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan Friday, "Because I control our company, I have the benefit of not having to convince the board not to fire me."
• None of the other members of tech's trillion-dollar club can move with the same speed or independence, even if they wanted to.

Case in point: Apple has always aimed, and often managed, to transcend mere politics and inhabit a separate dimension making "great products that people love."

• Cook worked with Trump last time around, winning "Tim Apple" as a sobriquet but also occasionally speaking out about the importance of protecting immigrant workers and LGBTQ rights.
• Google and Microsoft — both with immigrant, non-white CEOs — also offered some pushback on those issues during Trump's first administration as well.
• Tech leaders united to oppose Trump's ban on transgender troops and, in a variety of combinations, took on some of his immigration policies.

This time around, these firms are quietly signaling they want to cooperate with the new Trump team on issues — like competition with China — where they see common ground.

• All these companies were the target of a federal antitrust full-court press in the Biden era, and each is wondering whether they can get a reprieve from the new team in D.C.
• Every tech giant also wants to expand the use of skilled-worker visas, and that has already led to friction with the immigrant-hostile MAGA movement.

During the first Trump term, an activist young tech work force occasionally took to the barricades to protest government policies and pressure reforms from their employers.

• But multiple rounds of layoffs and a messy pandemic recovery have left workers feeling more insecure.
• While Zuckerberg's new policies have sparked internal debate and dissent at Meta, the CEO may welcome an exodus of dissenters as a sort of voluntary lay-off.
• In a Threads post, he described users who might quit Meta's platforms in protest as "virtue-signaling."

What we're watching: With each fresh controversy the new administration touches off, tech CEOs will have to navigate a maze involving Trump's demands for loyalty, employees' emotions and wishes, and their own strategies.

• If Zuckerberg's experiment of committing a whole megacompany to taking overt sides in America's vast culture war pays off, others could follow.

The bottom line: Trump used to say that Zuckerberg would "spend the rest of his life in prison." But the incoming president's relationships with business leaders are strictly transactional, and Meta's CEO is probably resting a lot easier now.

• While struggling with parenting duties, Babette Lockefeer considered quitting her business.
• Her husband didn't agree with her decision to stop work and be a stay-at-home mom.
• Lockefeer was angry at first but later realized she wouldn't be happy if she wasn't working.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Babette Lockefeer, 35, from the Netherlands, about navigating motherhood alongside her career. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Four months after my second child was born, I wasn't living life as I'd envisioned it.

I was in the midst of a big project for my business as a leadership and team facilitator and struggling to balance my career and motherhood. I felt overwhelmed, stressed, and sleep-deprived.

In the summer of 2021, I told my husband I wanted to quit the business. He immediately said no.

At first, I was angry. I'd always valued doing important work and my career, and I was willing to stop doing that for our family, but felt he wasn't letting me.

Over time, I realized he was right: I wouldn't have been happy as a stay-at-home mom. Talking with my husband and processing my feelings helped me realize that being a mother wasn't a detriment to my career. I had to deal with some insecurities and make some changes at home to understand I could do both.

I was always a high achiever at work

I started my career in 2014 as a consultant at McKinsey. I spent two and a half years there, but in 2016, I joined Alibaba as a global leadership associate. I spent around half a year in their Dutch office, helping Dutch e-commerce players connect to the Chinese market.

In the summer of 2017, my husband, who I'd met as a student, and I moved to China, and I worked for Alibaba in Hangzhou.

I really enjoyed it. We had monthly trainings where we learned more about China, e-commerce, and leadership. The training made me realize that my real interests lay in leadership development. In 2018, I left Alibaba and started my own business in the leadership space, TheoryY.

I was also pregnant with my first child at that time. Five months after his birth, in December 2019, we decided to leave China and move back to the Netherlands.

Soon after we returned, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I got pregnant again and had a second child in February 2021. Because of the pandemic, it was difficult to have family assistance with childcare or access to day care.

Around 10 weeks after giving birth, I started a new project with my business after being referred to a new client. Our newborn wasn't fond of sleeping, so we had a lot of broken nights.

For me, motherhood was about having a healthy attachment with my children, being present, and attending to all of their needs.

This was impossible to achieve all the time. I was too tired, overwhelmed, and full of doubt. With hindsight, I still did a good job as a mother, but I'd internalized the perfect mother myth.

Society's picture of an ideal mother is in direct conflict with that of an ideal employee. The employee is always available and wants to go the extra mile, but the mom also needs to be fully committed and always have the space to attend to her children's needs.

I was always a high achiever at work, but now, I had less time and energy to go the extra mile. I was working fewer hours than before having children, but when I was with my kids I wasn't always present because I was thinking about work. I felt like I wasn't doing a good job on the work front or the motherhood front.

My husband didn't think quitting would make me happy

My husband worked full-time. He was very involved as a dad. When our second child was born, he took some parental leave, spread across the year, plus six weeks of birth leave. But because I was self-employed and had more flexibility, I was always picking up things that fell off the wagon — which was a lot of the time during COVID.

I would spread my hours around, sometimes working in the evenings so I could still do the tasks I was hired to do. We never had a consistent schedule, and I felt like I was firefighting. Whenever a child was ill or had a doctor's appointment, the mental load was predominantly on my shoulders.

When I spoke to my husband about quitting, he said he didn't think it was the right decision. He also wanted to spend time with our kids and thought it wasn't fair if he was the sole breadwinning parent.

He also said he didn't think I'd be happy as a stay-at-home mom. I disagreed, saying I wasn't happy as it stood.

I spoke with my husband, processed my feelings and decided to continue working

From our first conversation, it was clear we weren't aligned, so we continued to discuss it.

I shared that I felt I was undervalued and wasn't appreciated by him unless I was achieving something professionally. He told me he still appreciated me now that I was a mom and wasn't on a steep career trajectory at the time.

I decided to continue working, but we also changed some practical things about our household. When our third child was born in July 2023, my husband was granted 26 weeks of parental leave by his new company, and he took all of it, taking full end-to-end responsibility for the household for the first time.

It allowed me to trust him fully with the kids and family chores going forward, so our dynamic has become more equal. We don't split things 50-50 all the time, but regularly discuss how best to divide responsibilities between us.

Looking back, I'm grateful that my husband could see that, in the long term, it wasn't a good idea for me to quit working. I need the intellectual stimulation that comes from a job, and my work fills me with the energy to show up as the mom and partner I want to be.

Do you have a story about balancing parenting with your career? Email Charissa Cheong at [email protected]

• Ultra-processed foods are associated with all kinds of poor health outcomes.
• But they're probably not all equally bad.
• An ongoing study suggests adding more high-volume foods into your ultra-processed diet could help.

It's no secret that ultra-processed foods aren't the greatest for our health.

"What we're trying to figure out is, very specifically, what is it about ultra-processed foods that seems to drive over-consumption and weight gain?" metabolism researcher Kevin Hall recently told Business Insider.

Hall works at the National Institutes of Health, where he is conducting an unusual experiment. He brings people into a tightly controlled food lab for one month, and tests out how four different diets — one unprocessed, and three ultra-processed, but all with the same levels of key nutrients — impact people's hunger, fullness, calorie consumption, weight gain, and fat loss.

While his study is still ongoing, he's been sharing some initial results with colleagues in the US and in Europe.

The early findings offer some hints about why UPFs can not only lead to weight gain but also make it hard to dump fat. The study is also showing that simple tweaks could make a huge difference. Perhaps, Hall says, you don't need to cut out ultra-processed products to have a satisfying, relatively healthy plate of food.

On an ultra-processed diet, patients gained 2 lbs a week

When Hall's patients switched diets, their calorie intake shifted dramatically.

During their week of unprocessed meals, full of fresh vegetables, beans, legumes, and whole grains, participants ate an average of 2,700 calories per day. They also tended to lose a little weight, about a pound of fat.

That changed when they switched to an 80% ultra-processed diet. Same amount of food offered, same levels of sugar, salt, fat, carbs, protein, and fiber on the plate.

The patients ended up consuming more food to achieve the same level of fullness — ingesting about 3,700 calories per day on average. On ultra-processed foods, the patients' weight shot up by over two pounds in a single week.

The results, while still preliminary, are even more striking than the last experiment Hall did like this, when patients ate 500 extra calories per day on ultra-processed diets.

People might not even feel like they're eating more when they consume those ultra-processed meals. Generally speaking, each bite of ultra-processed food is far more calorie-dense than a homemade meal.

Adding moisture made ultra-processed meals 'healthier'

Cutting out ultra-processed foods isn't realistic in the US, Hall said. But what if you could make a Western diet less bad?

Hoping to reduce people's weight gain and improve satiety with fewer calories, Hall (and his team of clinical chefs) devised two new diets to test this time.

Both diets were 80% ultra-processed but with some crucial adjustments.

In the first new diet, researchers lowered the amount of what are called "hyper-palatable foods" — foods that combine sugar, salt, and fat in ways that aren't typically seen in nature (think: rich, salty ice cream, a donut, or veggies in cream sauce).

Addiction researcher Tera Fazzino coined the term "hyper-palatable" as a way to collect data on the irresistibility of junk food. She hypothesizes that hyper-palatable ultra-processed foods might mess with our minds, and drive people to eat more than they would otherwise.

But that didn't ring true in Hall's new study. The patients who cut out hyper-palatable foods only saved themselves 200 calories a day, and gained over 1 lb in a week.

In the second diet, the chefs lowered the amount of hyper-palatable foods again, but also upped the moisture of people's ultra-processed meals, making them less energy-dense. Often, this meant adding more high-volume, non-starchy vegetables like a side salad to the ultra-processed plate.

"Basically, add very low-calorie mass," Hall told BI. "That typically is non-starchy vegetables."

On an ultra-processed diet with fewer energy-dense foods and less hyper-palatable items, people lost about a pound in one week — just like on the unprocessed diet. They also consumed about 830 fewer calories per day, very close to the 1,000 fewer calories consumed on the unprocessed diet.

"I thought, OK, gosh, we've solved this problem, this is great," Hall said during a presentation at Imperial College London in November, when he first revealed the new results.

There was a catch, though.

"A little bit of a monkey wrench was thrown in because we decided to look at the body composition changes," Hall said.

The nut we haven't cracked: Achieving the right kind of weight-loss

Only people on the 100% unprocessed diet lost body fat.

On the "healthier" ultra-processed diet, people lost about a pound of weight in a week, but it was coming from fat-free mass. That means muscle, bone, tissue, or maybe just water weight.

Hall is not yet sure why this is happening, but he says it could have to do with the "digestability" of the ultra-processed foods — in other words, how they are handled inside our bodies, compared to whole foods.

"If we can learn what those mechanisms are, then the really smart people who are ingenious food technologists and scientists can maybe re-engineer some of these foods," he told BI.

"There's so many narratives and hypotheses that sound reasonable, but until you actually do the studies to test that, then you don't know."

5 simple ways to make your meals healthier today

While it's still too early to say for sure exactly why people eat more calories and store more fat on ultra-processed diets, Hall says we can already begin to use his early findings to make some educated guesses.

Here are some tips:

• Bulk up a meal, any meal, by adding some vegetables to your plate. Could be salad. Could be a side of cooked broccoli or some carrots. They don't have to be fresh. Frozen is also just fine.

• Try some beans. You could whip up a hearty longevity-friendly minestrone soup, but if you don't have the time even ultra-processed refried beans are a decent option.

• Pick out whole grains, like oatmeal, brown rice, and quinoa.

• Pay attention to how much added sugar is in items like yogurt, granola, and salad dressing, and try to limit how much of it you consume. (Olive oil makes a great dressing, and it's filled with healthy fats and beneficial plant compounds.)

• Prioritize the satiating, nutrient-rich foods we know are associated with good health, like eggs (even the ultra-processed liquid kind might be fine).

"It's possible that there's some weird additive or some ingredient in that food that is not good for you," Hall said. "We don't have the science on that yet, but applying what we do know, I think you can still make educated choices."

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