First of all, before continuing on, yes my birthday was on Monday. I’m 28. Hooray! I work under the belief that every girl should do something nice for herself once in a while, especially on her birthday. My birthday was no exception. Weather was beautiful and I made a little extra money this last paycheck, so I’m thinking I’m gonna spoil myself just rotten.

Second bit is that since I do now have some extra $$, the blog is going to be seeing a major overhaul. My friend David is an excellent web designer, so he’s going to be helping me update the layout, and I’ll be shelling out some bucks to WordPress for an updated account. Big things changing around here! And all his services will cost me is lunch. I’m lucky to have such amazing friends ❤

But anyways, let’s get back to talking about hair.

I ended up not washing my hair on Sunday because my workday ended up running pretty late, and frankly, when I got home, I didn’t feel like it. But we can just say that I wanted to see if the baking soda would mitigate any extra oil production, since hair can get pretty gross when you don’t wash it. Yeah, that sounds better, let’s go with that. You guys see the sacrifices I make for you? Jeez.

Anyway! As you can imagine, the week was pretty hectic, balancing between my birthday madness and work, so I didn’t get around to making a proper blog post until now. Sorry about that! But I’ve dutifully taken pictures and gotten everything good to go, so at least the week was properly documented. Brace yourselves, I’ll be showing you pictures of me at my greasiest, and it will not be pleasant. Consider yourselves warned. But that comes later. Onto the schematics of the week.

Whenever I go to the gym to work out, I start out with a mile run, and cardio is usually when the faucet turns on in my scalp. Monday was upper body, so I only spent an hour at the gym, as opposed to the two I spend whenever I do full-body workouts. I debated whether or not I wanted to wait until Friday, when I do said full-body, but I figured I don’t sweat much more doing those than I do when I just focus on one area, because most of the sweating, as I said, comes from the cardio I do either way. Plus, again, it was my birthday and I was going out to dinner that night, so I want my hair to look as nice as possible under the circumstances.  So I went ahead after I washed my hair to do the coconut oil deep conditioning.

Verdict? When they tell you you need soap to wash that shit out, THEY MEAN IT.

I tried to use as little shampoo as possible to get rid of the coconut oil, but I also made the mistake of using too much. I didn’t realize it until later when I was out with my grandmother wondering why my hair was taking so long to dry…until I realized it was. My hair was so oiled up, it roped up and made me look like an absolute greaseball. I had to borrow my grandmother’s shower and use more shampoo to get the rest of the stuff out of my hair in time to meet with my best friend for my extremely wonderful and memorable birthday dinner. But I learned really quickly that there’s a definite balance to coconut oil and you have to make sure you use enough soap to get it out, because you won’t know whether or not your hair is clean and free of the residue until it dries. Needless to say, I didn’t give it another go until today.

So fast forward to Friday. Have I seen any difference this week, having subjected my hair to the debatable reputation of baking soda? Well yes, actually. I have noticed within the past day or two that my hair is actually less dry than it was the first go around. And yes, baking soda did hold up against the monstrous greaseball that is my head post-gym. This is what that looks like, for people who are dying to see me at my least attractive:

SCRUNCHY FACE!

This and the aftershot that will come later was before today, before I gave the coconut oil another go. It’s really just to point out that even on super dirty hair, the baking soda is just as, if not more, effective than traditional shampoo. And again, the dryness is definitely starting to taper off, so I’m erring on the side of optimism that baking soda and ACV may just be my new hair care regime of choice.

INFINITELY MORE ATTRACTIVE AMIRITE?

As you can see from the picture (or not, it’s a terrible shot),  my hair is still a little on the frizzy side, but overall, it’s holding up very well. I didn’t use any product in my hair when I took this pic, which probably accounts for the flyaways, but I’m still cautiously optimistic that my hair will smooth out. Your scalp goes through cycles where skin is replaced, and a typical scalp turnover is 28 days, so I know I probably won’t see optimal results for at least another three weeks – but I’m liking the progress I’ve made so far!

Now, as for the coconut oil bit…I did that again today. And this time, by George, I was smarter. I shampooed my hair after using the oil, and I used much less than last time, but this time,  of course, I fear that I didn’t use enough! But again, we’ll have to see in a few weeks. Using coconut oil is not going to be a weekly thing – more like a bi-weekly deep conditioning, to be adjusted as needed. The important bit, however, remains that the baking soda and ACV treatment do seem to be working well, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. More research, however, I think is necessary before I reach a conclusion, but for me and my hair type and bathing habits, I think it’s working pretty damned well. We’ll check in again in a week and see if there’s any further improvement! Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I smell my birthday cake.