What Are Your Hair Goals?

Today I'm coming through really quick to talk about hair goals. Do you have any hair goals? Just like anything else in life I have goals for my hair. I'm not a perfectionist or anything but my number one goal for my hair was to perfect my regimen. This comes with trial and error trying different products. Which ends up finding products your hair doesn't like. This brings me to my number 2 of my short term goal, learning my hair. There's a few products that my hair completely hates. Such as Shea butter, Shea Moisture's Coconut & Hibiscus Curl Enhancing Smoothie just to say a few. That product is weird to me because my hair loves both coconut and hibiscus lol.

  Third on my short term goals was to reach Arm Pit Length(APL), then Bra Strap Length(BSL) and Mid Back Length(MBL). Though I was eager to reach these three goals. MBL took me the longest, for some reason it seemed like everything changed on my hair. Like something over night. Products changed for my hair, my texture even changed towards the back. The front of my hair seemed like it was Spring all year long. I had so much new growth. It was a good thing because it seemed as though it was thinning slightly. Then my edges mostly around my temples started looking a little scarce. Then for 3 long years it seemed like I could not retain my length passed BSL. Wheew!! It was a lot but luckily I didn't lose hair like crazy or ending up with even shorter hair.

 Pretty much this article is so that you will if you haven't already write down your hair goals. Stick to them and make sure you stay motivated and take great care of your hair to reach those goals that you have set. Well that's all for now see you later...............


Short Term Goals:
1. Perfecting my regimen
2. Learning my hair
3.To reach APL- Achieved May 10
4. To reach BSL- Achieved  Oct 10
5. To reach MBL- Achieved Aug 13


Long Term Goals:
1. To have healthy hair
2. Let my hair grow to its full potential
3. My hair to touch my shoulders in it's shrunken state
4. My fro to get bigger than Aevin Dugas

Hair Diary #11 Is Your Hair Experiencing Protein Overload??

Hello everyone! I'm back again and already I'm doing better than the past by keeping my blog updated. So today's hair diary is talking about Protein Sensitivity. I will start with my story first and add some information along the post.

Okay so last year around maybe October-ish or even September. I went on YouTube and watched a lady's video on how to tell if your hair is damaged or not. Now I haven't ever had a situation with damaged hair but I figured you know what I'll give this a try just to see, because I'm on a healthy hair care journey and I want to keep it that way. On her video she shows how you take a strand of your (clean) hair, either from your head or shed hair on your comb or whatever and place it into a (glass) cup almost filled to the top with water.

In the video she says if your hair sinks it is damaged. Later on I figured out she didn't give complete information, because after a while your hair may sink. I didn't think of that at the time though. So when I took a few strands of my hair (not all at once) and placed it in the water. By the time I returned back to the cup my hair was at the bottom. I really didn't know what to do when I saw this. She mentioned that it meant your hair could be weak or it's time for you to get a protein treatment.

So I thought to myself "Dang! I've been natural for 4 years now and I don't ever remember doing protein treatments like that." Maybe just a few times and I actually didn't know they were protein at the time. So I looked up homemade protein treatments and my cousin did avocado hair masks. So I was like okay I will start there. So I get everything I need and I literally did a protein treatment on my hair every week that I washed my hair. It was my deep conditioner for the week.

After about 4- 6 weeks I did the test all over again. This time around my hair didn't sink I left for about 5 mins and it didn't sink so I was like I'll wait for an hour. I came back and my baby was still floating lol. I was so excited I said I will keep doing my protein treatments from now on. I could feel that my hair became stronger so I continued. 2013 came around and I continued down the weekly protein treatment path.

Around March or April I noticed my hair was starting to feel hard. I didn't think anything of it I just figured it's getting stronger. Since it only felt hard after the protein treatment I just shunned it away because it became a little softer after my hair dried. I continued again, until May came around and my hair remained feeling hard even after it dried and just blah!! Felt like a big mess sitting on my head. I just wasn't feeling it so I kept it in twists or covered.

I did some research on protein overload and protein sensitivity. I went to websites like Curly Nikki http://www.curlynikki.com/search?q=protein+sensitive for "protein sensitivity" and http://blackgirllonghair.com/2012/01/10-reasons-your-hair-isnt-soft/ for "10 Reasons Your Hair isn't soft." I kept researching more sites but I can't remember right now. These sites have a good amount of information on them so I won't really go into detail unless you have some questions for me.

After going to these sites I came to the conclusion that my hair IS NOT protein sensitive but I did have protein overload. I realized that my hair produces a normal amount of protein already. My hair has Average porosity (Normal Hair). The protein overload was affecting my hair's porosity which made it High porosity (Overly Porous). This caused my hair not to hold on to moisture and become dry and brittle. Even though I moisturized my hair once a week because that's all it takes for my hair. I did not switch that up during the very frequent protein treatments. I should have been moisturizing a few more times just to combat the protein overload. Curly Nikki has a few good articles on hair porosity, here's the link: http://www.curlynikki.com/search?q=hair+porosity .

So I completely stopped everything protein to my hair for a little while and focused on moisturizing and sealing my hair. Just to be safe sometimes I will add a little extra moisture during the week. That's just a precaution though. As soon as I stopped the protein for a while my hair went back to its nice soft self :). Additionally moisturizing my hair with water and glycerin. I already had some conditioners that are protein free (I'm a conditioner junkie) so once I co-washed my hair, my hair fell in love. It grasped onto that conditioner and water like it was a long lost lover or something lol. It's funny because I just bought that conditioner maybe 2 weeks before. It's definitely going to be a staple of mine now. Pictures below (Herbal Escapes Pomegranate & Grapeseed Extract and Tea Therapy Vanilla Mint Tea

They're cheapies as well VO5 baby!! Now I'm already and fan and lover of the Tea therapy but I ran out and just haven't bought more but the newbie to the team is this Pomegranate. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Now back on the protein treatments. I still do them but now I know I'm good with just using it once every 6-8 weeks and I'm good. I hope this helps anybody that's hair is acting different and they don't know why. Life has now returned back to my hair and I'm all smiles :) Until next time...........