It was a beautiful summer Friday in Newport Beach. Warm with a cool breeze, the air carrying just enough salt to remind you the ocean was near, but the sand was closer. I was at one of those colorful and popular acai-bowl places, the kind with bike racks and picnic tables outside, and people studying the menu like it was a ritual.

Six teenagers walked in, girls in bikinis, boys in boardshorts, smelling like ocean water and coconut sunscreen, all tanned and loose-limbed from a day at the beach. They ordered, easy and unhurried, then settled at the picnic table near mine, girls on one side, boys on the other. I watched them, expecting chatter, laughter, maybe some inside joke thrown across the table. But not a single one spoke. They were utterly silent, just the soft scrape of plastic spoons on paper bowls. The glow of their screens hovered near their faces.

I sat there for a long moment, unsettled. As a GenXer, I can’t remember a time when sitting with friends meant silence. Back then, our hangouts were noisy, full of overlapping stories and half-finished jokes, music leaking out of someone’s cassette deck or car radio. There was always a reason to talk, even if it was just to complain about being bored. Togetherness was the point. If something happened, you heard it in person, in real time. Nothing, not boredom, not distraction, not even your own teenage angst, could pull you away from the table, from the people right in front of you.

But these kids weren’t unhappy. They weren’t fighting, awkward, or bored in any visible way. They were just… elsewhere. When they finished, they got up and left.

I started seeing it everywhere after that.

In New York City, sitting in a restaurant in Columbus Circle, I looked around and realized that almost every table had at least one person looking at their phone. Couples. Groups of friends. People who had made a plan, gotten dressed, traveled across the city to be together, and were now sitting in companionable silence with their screens. The restaurant was full of people, yet somehow, empty.

At the gym, I started noticing people pull out their phones mid-class to check messages. Some would type out responses, thumbs moving fast, while the instructor cued the next pose or the music drove the next interval. Someone once answered a call in a yoga class, stayed on it, and stepped to the back of the room, as if the courtesy was in the geography rather than in not picking up in the first place.

I won’t pretend I was above any of it. I’ve been guilty too, the reflexive reach, the mid-conversation glance at a screen. But I have always tried, sometimes imperfectly, to put people first. No answering the phone or texting when I’m with someone, unless it’s a genuine emergency. Unless you’re a doctor on call, what could be so important that it can’t wait until you’re no longer sitting across from another human being?

Phone-Free Friday. That’s what I started saying when people asked where my phone was. Just one day a week, when I decided I was in charge of my phone instead of the other way around. Not a detox, not a rule. Just a reclaiming. I get to decide when I reach for it and when I let it be. I choose what gets my attention.

On a Phone-Free Friday, instead of firing off a text, you might actually call someone, hear their voice, laugh at something together in real time. Better yet, you might meet them for lunch and look them in the eye when they tell you something that matters. You might walk somewhere and actually notice what’s around you. You might sit in a restaurant and watch the room, the way I did in Columbus Circle, and feel the specific loneliness of being surrounded by people who are somewhere else.

The point isn’t the absence of your phone. The point is the presence of your life.

I think about those teenagers sometimes. They’re probably in their late twenties now, maybe older. I wonder if any of them look back at their adolescence and feel, dimly, that something was missing. That they were handed the technology of infinite connection just as they were learning how to connect, and that the timing wasn’t entirely lucky. Or maybe they’re fine. Maybe they found their way to each other eventually, through some other channel, in some other room. One can dream.

But I still hope that somewhere, on a sunny afternoon in Newport Beach, there’s a table of teenagers, real, messy, and loud. Someone telling a story that makes the others laugh so hard they almost spill their acai bowls. Their phones are out of sight, not because anyone told them to put them away, but because, for once, they don’t care. For a little while, being together is enough.

That’s all Phone-Free Friday ever meant to me: permission to let go. Just for a little while, to remember what it feels like to be fully here. Maybe you try it too. Just once. See what you notice when you put the phone down and let the world rush in.

Originally published at nataleepress.substack.com

You did everything you were supposed to do. You counted calories, cut out carbs, gave up wine, and pushed through three tough weeks. Then, one day, you eat a whole bag of potato chips and give up. But by Monday, you’re starting over again.

Sound familiar?

Your Body Is Smarter Than Your Diet

When you drastically cut calories, your body doesn’t celebrate. It panics. It reads the deficit as a famine signal and slows your metabolism to compensate. You start burning fewer calories at rest. Your hunger hormones, leptin and ghrelin, go haywire, making you feel ravenous even when you’ve technically eaten enough. And if the diet is severe enough, you start losing muscle, which further lowers your metabolic rate.

So you’re hungrier, slower, and losing muscle. Great plan.

The Yo-Yo Is Not a Personal Failure

Gaining and losing weight over and over isn’t about lacking willpower. It’s how your body responds to being restricted. Each time you crash diet, your body becomes better at storing fat and less efficient at burning it. It’s trying to protect you. The more you diet, the harder it gets to keep the weight off. You might even gain back more than you lost, and the cycle repeats.

Yo-yo dieting also puts extra stress on your skin, muscles, and even your heart. Binge eating after a strict diet isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s your body’s way of reacting to being deprived.

So What Actually Works?

Eating more plants.

Vegetables, fruits, beans, and whole grains give your body what it needs to stay healthy. You can eat a big plate of food, feel full, and still lose weight without dieting.

No more hunger. No feeling deprived. No need to count calories.

Calorie Density is Key

Calorie density means how many calories are in a certain amount of food. Foods with high calorie density have more calories in a small portion, while foods with low calorie density have fewer calories in the same amount. If you pick foods with lower calorie density, you can eat more food and still keep your calories under control, since most people eat about the same weight of food every day.

A pound of broccoli has about 100 calories, but a pound of french fries has about 1,400. Broccoli has more fiber and water, so it takes up more space in your stomach, helps you feel full faster, and keeps you satisfied longer.

That’s how calorie density works. It’s not magic. It’s just math and biology working with you, not against you.

The Restriction Trap

Diets are restrictive. You get less food, fewer calories, but you’re still the same person. For a few weeks, willpower may carry you through. But eventually, cravings kick in, you’re hungry all the time, and you’re getting crankier by the day.

Plant-based eating flips this completely. When the majority of your plate is vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, you can eat generous portions and fill up on nutrient-dense but calorically light food. A huge bowl of vegetable soup, a massive stir-fry over brown rice, a loaded baked potato with salsa and black beans. That’s not a diet. That’s just dinner.

Volume Eating Is Not a Trick

Some people hear “eat more plants” and assume it’s a gimmick. It’s not. The research on calorie density and satiety is solid. When people switch to a whole food plant-based diet without any calorie restriction, no counting, no tracking, no points, they naturally eat fewer calories because they’re eating foods that fill them up more efficiently.

You stop restricting not because you’re forcing yourself, but because you’re simply not hungry anymore.

For many people, it’s the first time in years they feel like they’re eating enough.

The Mindset Shift Nobody Talks About

Dropping the diet mentality isn’t just feel-good advice. It’s practical. When you stop labeling foods as good or bad, stop treating eating as a moral test, and start focusing on what actually nourishes your body, something shifts. The obsessive food thoughts quiet down. The binge-restrict cycle loses its grip. And for the first time, food feels like something that works for you rather than something you’re constantly fighting.

The Bottom Line

If you’ve tried every diet and failed, you’re not broken. You’ve just been playing a rigged game.

Eat more plants. Let go of dieting.

It’s not complicated. It’s just not profitable for anyone to tell you that.

Nataleé Press is a plant-based health coach and the author of Eating Green, Living Lean, available on Amazon at amazon.com/author/natalee

The Tale of My Balcony Woes: A Comedy of Errors (and Umbrellas)

For the past eight years, I’ve been waging a quiet but determined battle to have a nice balcony. Spoiler alert: The balcony is winning.

It all started in 2016 with my first patio umbrella. It was a good idea at the time: shade, ambiance, and some outdoor charm. Then, one windy day, the umbrella decided it had other plans. It broke. I mourned its loss briefly, then bought a second umbrella.

Fast-forward to December 14, 2021. The rainstorms came. The wind didn’t just break my umbrella; it tore it apart, yanked it out of its 30-pound base, and flung it over my balcony in a dramatic farewell that also brought down my patio lights. I stared at the carnage, wondering if my balcony held a grudge.

But I’m stubborn and a little naive. I ordered a better umbrella, one that was more “substantial.” Surely, this would be the one to weather the storms! And it did. It survived last year’s rains, but the color faded to a dull ghost of its former self, and the pull string got jammed. By this point, I realized that patio umbrellas and I might not be compatible.

Enter: the windsail. It felt like a genius move, a new strategy! Feeling optimistic, I mounted it on sturdy alloy steel poles and strung my patio lights underneath. It looked beautiful. It was perfect.

Then came the rainstorm on January 7, 2025. The wind picked up, the sail started thrashing, and suddenly, my “sturdy” steel poles were no match. The sail ripped free on one side, slamming repeatedly into my living room window as though it was auditioning for a horror movie. I frantically tied it up with three bungee cords to keep it from breaking the glass. The lights? Once again, they came crashing down, and I unplugged them in defeat.

Since January 7, a sad, bungee-corded windsail has been hanging limply from my balcony, tangled in dead patio lights. It was a monument to perseverance or perhaps stubbornness.

But last night, the balcony delivered its final blow. It must have been windy, rainy, or both because when I woke up, the steel pole holding up the left side of the windsail had snapped in half. Now, the windsail hangs in front of my patio door like some tattered flag of surrender, lights hopelessly knotted around it.

So, after eight years, three umbrellas, one windsail, countless patio lights, and too many rainstorms to count, I admit defeat. I’m taking everything down. My balcony has won.

I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so I’m doing both. But at least my patio lights will be untangled in the process.