Eat Like Trash, Look Like Trash and Be a Baldhead Scallywag
As I told you all in the story of how I grew my hair as a reluctant, lazy, natural, it takes way more than a miracle cream that you put ON your head; to grow healthy hair, it’s important what you put IN your body.
I was whining about hair loss and dissatisfactory skin once on FaceTime with one of my old co-workers from NM, B. Barry, and she told me, “T.K., you’re in your late twenties and you eat like you’re 12…” You know how we’d regularly eat hot fries, Snickers, and pickles in place of a meal (if our parents let us)? Come home from school, eat ramen noodles, and all the Little Debbie Cakes our hearts desired? Opt for junk or snacks over meals? Yep, that’s me. She continued, “you don’t think that will eventually have an effect?! If I was your hair, I’d fall out too.”
I grew my hair from the nape of my neck to reaching my armpit in only a little over a year, as I outlined in a previous beauty blog post, but I feel as though I hit a plateau. Even worse, it seems I began to regress. Notice the two pictures below, they’re 6 months apart and my hair looks (and felt in my hands) as though it lost density and length.
The picture on the left (black top) is from January 2021 and the picture on the right (white top) is from June 2021. Prior to getting my hair pressed in June, I’d been noticing way more shedding than usual. And when I say way more, I mean waaaaaay more. Every time I ran my fingers thru my hair, even if I did it 10 times in a row, groups of strands would slide out. When I told my girl B. Barry about it as it was happening, she brushed it off, but when she saw my hair pressed out again, and noticed the difference with her own eyes, she was more alarmed than me, “ou girl, uhn uhn, T.K., you need to get that checked out… That ain’t good. You need to get your health together or something.”
I’m improving my eating habits for the sake of my skin and hair.
Thanks to my mother passing down her slim fine genes, I don’t really see the effects of poor eating choices on the physical appearance of my body, but believe you me, oh baby, I see it elsewhere. My face is good for acting a fool, and I told you about my hair falling out, and those woes are only in addition to it feeling like elephants are stampeding thru my digestive track when I really cut up. (I also enjoy riding my bike aroundLA, and eating better means better energy levels.). Of course I have many reasons for a maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but this time it happened to be my skin and hair that reminded me I have to increase my effort towards giving my body more nutrition and well-rounded meals consistently.
They say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and my stomach is growling before I can even open my eyes good, so I figured, why not start there?!
Lately, in the mornings for breakfast, I’ve been getting up and making a variation of breakfast that includes at least 3 out of the 5 food groups.
grains
proteins
fruits
dairy
vegetables
Five out of five would be ideal, but hey, give a girl time. This was this morning’s meal.
Please note, this is not about losing weight. I know we like to conflate losing weight with eating healthy, but let’s not do that here because you will be off to a terrible start in your weight loss journey following behind me; I eat plenty of calories, carbs, (healthy) fats, and (unprocessed or natural) sugars, none of which is marketed to make a person skinny.
Oh, while I’m giving disclaimers, let me also say that I am not a nutritionist. I’m sharing what I’m choosing to eat, based on what I’ve researched, gathered, and been advised will be best for what I want for my body, on my blog. For expert nutritional advice specialized for your body, or if you are struggling with a nutrition-related health issue, you should consult a healthcare professional. (Not an Instagram health guru.. an actual skilled, trained professional, you know, maybe somebody with letters behind their name; ex. Bianca Plant, MPA, RD, LDN.. a Registered Dietician, etc.).
Here’s what you see in the above picture of my quick and easy breakfast:
whole grain waffles
Nature’s Path “Ancient Grains”
nutrient-dense quinoa
USDA organic
agave syrup
low glycemic sweetener
USDA organic
avocado
from local farms
USDA organic
chicken & apple sausage
Aidell’s all natural breakfast links
chicken raised with no antibiotics
no artificial ingredients
orange juice
cold-pressed
non-gmo verified
collagen peptides
Garden of Life, grass-fed, unflavored
white-ish, powdery substance seen in cup, accompanied by a blender ball to mix it into my orange juice (in hopes to not taste it, because my goodness! the thought of chicken/bone broth is absolutely repulsive to my taste buds)
daily multivitamin
one daily superfood with iron
made with whole foods; no fillers, no binders, nothing synthetic
green cylindrical capsule in middle of plate because I take it WITH BREAKFAST
You’ll notice I threw two supplements into the equation, but I use them as simply that: supplements. The certified nutritionist I mentioned earlier (Bianca Plant, MPA, RD, LDN) will tell you, FOOD FIRST! She encourages her clients and news segment viewers to try to consume as many nutrients as possible by the way of actual food, as opposed to pills and powders. I supplement vitamins into my regimen with moderation.
According to Heathline, there are at least 13 Foods That Help Your Body Produce Collagen, and sure, I eat them, but we’re talking about transforming hair, so I want some extra occasionally. I chose to throw in the daily multi-vitamin (that I’m still working on taking daily) after some research that hair loss in women can sometimes to be linked to iron deficiency. I wasn’t sure that I was iron-deficient, so I decided to get a catch-all vitamin, so-to-speak, that also has iron in it.
Since I made these changes, my hair has stopped falling out the way it was, and I’m praying, wishing and chanting that it won’t look skimpy again the next time I get it pressed out.
All of these items came from my local Lassens Natural Foods and Vitamins store.
If you’ve clicked around this website, or met me in-person, you may know that I’m always on my soap box about something. I mention getting all of these items from my local grocery store in aspirations to make you think about shopping at yours. If there’s a Walmart 5 minutes away from you, that’s not what I mean by local. Now if there’s a farmer’s market near you, that’s shopping local. Shopping local means supporting your small and locally-owned businesses, like a family grocer, or limited chain only found in your region (for example: Rouses in South Louisiana).
Related: Click here for reasons why you should shop at farmers’ markets instead of grocery stores!
Okay, now that I’ve done multiple shameless plugs to other pages on this website, I’ll go ahead and close this one out. My original intention was to throw my breakfast up here quicker than I ate it and be gone, but I couldn’t even do that.. aie aie aie! I’ll find a way to more consistently and quickly put out content one day. (Hopefully, that one day is soon.)
How do you see your body affected when you eat like trash?
Comment here on this page (below), send me a tweet on Twitter, or tag me in an InstaStory on the Gram.
This blog post is intended to give ideas, not to be taken as medical advice.
I paid for all of these items out of my own pocket; this is not a paid sponsorship (when it is, though it will not sway my opinion of the product, I will let you know in the spirit of transparency).
