So I don't use shampoo unless my hair feels really coated. I co-wash almost every time I wash, and I leave in my deep conditioner. I make almost all my products and at this point nearly all my remaining products [none of which I will be repurchasing, as I have home made recipes I like] are all natural. It's weird how this happened, because I just wanted to save money!
My hair loves natural things: I've never used a store bought DC that worked better than coconut milk, I've never used a leave-in better than EVCO/EVOO/Grape seed oil mixed, I've never used a sealant better than shea butter [if I need hold] / castor oil. While silicones never seemed to really mess up my hair, they didn't do much to make it look or feel better either. Sulfates just make my hair rediculously frizzy, so I stopped using those as well. Leaving in my conditioner is the only way for me to have hair that is moisturized for more than the first 24 hours after I DC and still not even more than 48 hours! I ended up inadvertantly doing CG/TCG with natural hair products without even knowing what they were until about 2.5-3 years into my journey!
It's not like my hair is great, and I sometimes use shampoo and silicones. I'm not officially doing any of this, but it's usually to correct a problem and then I usually have to correct whatever problem was caused by using those products -____-.
I will say, though, that these practices have finally started to show some results.
My hair never looked wet when it was until
this week. It always looked dry even when soaking wet. Using coconut
milk and [this new product I just got] as well as cowashing with VO5 without having
shampooed at all for a few months seems to have improved my hair's ability to absorb
water. This is great! I thought it was just a textural issue and not a
moisture one, but this is actually defining my curls [they even CLUMPED FOR A FEW
MINUTES last night!] and improving my moisture. My hair's feeling and appearance is more constantly good as well; my hair is now flat iron glossy from
roller sets! I can consistantly make it soft every day, so I don't have the 'oh crap' moment in the morning when my hair feels horrible and I have no idea how to fix it.
Shine/Gloss/Sheen: The absolute most I could get before was light sheen, after a set or flat iron. I would say a shine is when your hair is reflecting bright white, and a gloss is when it looks 'done' but not necessarily blinding. I
will say that I'm okay with sheen, I actually prefer it because it looks
healthier in my eyes, but I never realized my hair could actually be like this without heat. I'm going to BC at the end of this year [that is a definite "Yes," I'd previously been struggling with cutting off my relaxed hair, because I care too much about my natural hair and I wanted the relaxed hair to take all the damage, LOL. That's horrible, isn't it?] I know that my hair will be long enough for me when this year is up, so maybe I'll do it on NYE or something. [Assuming the castor oil doesn't make it grow so fast that I can just cut it on my b-day or something. That'd be really cool, but I don't know if castor oil will really make my hair grow any faster and I'm not counting on it.]
I played with my natural hair during my wash last night—no sections since I left my clips at school—and I really love it: I loved it poofy, defined, whatever,
it was just great all around!] I want my natural hair to be as healthy as possible when I
BC, so I'm very glad this natural no-unhealthy-products thing is
working.
So I'd recommend people try the CG/TCG methods, if they can't happen into working products like I did, because those methods are tried and true, and obviously for good reason if I accidentally started them!
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