No Pooing in 2014

Catchy title, huh? I’ll explain later on in the entry.

It’s been a wild two months since I last did a really in depth entry. By “wild” I really mean stressful, worrisome, depressing and aggravating. Most of it, I don’t feel like talking about,. I’m fine, Ben’s fine, Robbie’s fine. We have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies and spent Christmas together, which is a great leap over last year when we had to live apart due to finances. We even had a small Christmas, which made everyone happy and Robbie proclaimed it “the best Christmas EVAR” so that’s something.

Instead, I’m going to stick with a more light hearted topic, which I’ve been meaning to write about.

Health and wellness!

As I’m approaching my 32nd year, I realized I’m not as healthy as I want to be.

The trip to the doctor when my back decided it despised the very fabric of my being revealed I’m back up to 180 pounds. I was 180 pounds Christmas Eve 2013, which led to a subsequent freak out of “I was only 178 when 9 months pregnant!” and started my weight loss journey. After that entry, I pretty much stopped working out. I even have a gym membership now, but have only gone twice. It’s been a slow regain ever since, but a regain nonetheless and something I am not happy about. All that work seems to have gone down the drain. Add that in to the last two months of stress and depression, and I pretty much spent a few days in bed (back notwithstanding). I’m back to square one.

I’ve started transitioning back into portion control, slowly scaling back to eating actual serving sizes rather than just eating until I’m full. This is always the hardest part for me as I feel like I’m staving after I eat. That’s the problem if you start overeating, your stomach stretches and it takes more to feel full. Until it shrinks back to normal size, which takes about two weeks for me, I come close to eating my plate afterwards. I’m moving into it more slowly this time so I don’t feel like I’m starving myself after every meal.

I’ll start walking again once Robbie starts back to school. Walking right after the bus picks him up is not optimal anymore. Since we live close to his school, his pickup time is 7:15. I don’t have to be at work until 1:00. My best option would be to nap until 10-10:30, get up, walk and still have time to be ready by the time my ride gets here around 12:00. That’s plenty of time even once I work myself up to a 30 minute walk like before.

Really, those are the main things with me. Overeating and lack of motivation. I don’t eat many sweets, don’t eat much fast food. I could eat a bit healthier as to what I actually do eat, but time plays a huge factor here. It’s hard to cook everyday when you get home from work after 10:00pm, don’t get to sleep until midnight at least, get up at 6:40am during the week to have the kid at the bus by 7:15am and try to get in a nap before work. Cooking is usually boxed meals like Hamburger Helper, which is not on the healthy side by any means.

I’ve started taking vitamins. I take one multivitamin, vitamin c, acedolphlous and at least two coconut oil capsules every day. Every other day I take calcium and, when I remember to, cayenne pepper capsules before I eat.

When I moved back in with my parents last year, I started taking better care of my skin. Until last month, I stuck with the regimen of Olay products. Then, last month, my skin stopped responding to Olay. It just sort of plateaued for awhile, then seemed to have no effect at all.

After some researching on pricing and internet reviews, I switched it up and decided to try Avon. Prior to this summer when I ordered stick eye shadow from Avon, I’d never used anything but their lotion. But I was impressed with the eye shadow enough to give their eyeliner a go and also ordered the Anew Clinical Advanced Retexturizing Peel at the same time. I used it for five days in a row, rather than the every other day, to simulate a slower peel than what you would get at a salon. A salon peel is typically 50% gycloic acid, whereas the Avon pads are 10%. I was pretty impressed with the result.

I’ve since added Anew Clinical Eye Lift PRO Dual Eye System and Anew Clinical Thermafirm Face Lifting Cream to my regimen. Those are both keepers. I also got travel sized containers of Anew Platinum Night Cream and Anew Platinum Cleanser Travel Size when they were on sale for $6 and $2.50 respectively. I wanted to try them out, but didn’t want to buy the full sizes since they are for an older age group and the reviews from younger women were generally less than stellar. While I love the cleanser, they jury is still out on the night cream. Some nights, like tonight, it feels really heavy on my skin. Other nights, it doesn’t. It’s impossible to tell how it’s going to feel beforehand. While my skin looks great after using it, the heavy feeling is slightly annoying.

Now onto the meaning behind the entry title. I’ve decided to go no poo with my hair. I’ve been reading about different methods over the last couple of days and came to the conclusion that I was already on the verge of no poo. I’ve trained my hair to only need washing once a week already. This is started over two months ago. I would warm up some coconut oil, work it into my scalp and hair really well with a massage that I would try to make last ten minutes, leave it on for anywhere between two hours to all night. When I washed it out, I was using just a dab of coconut milk shampoo to wash out the excess oil then conditioned like normal. Funnily enough, I didn’t even know the shampoo lacked the ingredients no poo’ers are trying to avoid until yesterday. I just bought it because it’s what my bff uses and I became hooked after using it once at the gym when I forgot my shampoo. I also started wearing it up in buns and half ponytails to protect it more.

The funny thing is, I was detoxing my hair without knowing it. I was just tired of having a dry scalp and REALLY dry hair. After two or three days without shampooing, my scalp tends to get itchy, which is when I would always wash my hair. It stayed that way for a couple of weeks once I started using the coconut oil, then stopped happening as much until I was on day 6 before it would start itching. Last week, I went 8 days without my scalp itching.

Yesterday, I decided to just go the rest of the way. My hair has really been growing a lot more in this past month. It was stuck right at my shoulders for a long time, now it’s past my shoulders.

Yesterday was also day six since my last wash, so I went ahead and did the baking soda wash. I didn’t like the measurement ratios I saw online since I didn’t know the reaction my hair would have to baking soda, so I did my own. I boiled a pot of water and added a half tablespoon of baking soda while it was still boiling. I’ll measure out the water next time. I was probably around four cups of water. After it cooled to room temperature, I put it in a sport top water bottle and hopped in the shower. To avoid getting much on my dry as hell ends, I held out my hair while it was still dry and poured the baking soda water just on my scalp. I gave myself a head massage to work it in, poured a bit in my hand to work through the rest of my hair.

After the shower, I was pretty amazed how soft and smooth my hair was even while still wet. I can’t NOT use conditioner. If I shampoo and don’t use conditioner, you could chop it off and feed it to a horse, it is that dry. The coconut milk shampoo was the first shampoo I’ve ever been able to use without conditioner, yet it still felt dryer than if I use conditioner. The baking soda left my hair feeling like I had used a light conditioner, it was that soft and that easy to comb.

Since I didn’t have apple cider vinegar on hand to do a rinse like all of the websites suggested, I made a hair mask instead. 2 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons coconut oil, one tablespoon honey and just enough water to thin it down. After gently drying my hair with a towel, I massaged the mixture first into my scalp (that ten minute head massage again) and then into the rest of my hair. I gently combed through it to make sure it was worked through my hair and then let it sit for two hours.

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you, rinsing this out was a pain in the ass. I may not have gotten all of the coconut oil out since it looks slightly greasy, yet I don’t feel any residue on my hands if I run my fingers through my hair. But, boy howdy, is my hair soft today! It’s not as shiny as I would like, probably because I didn’t do the acv rinse, but the natural highlights are clearer and it’s not frizzy, not even on the dry ends that are leftover from when I was bleaching it.

I’m going to do this same routine every week for the next month and see how it goes.

Last updated December 27, 2014