Friday, October 16, 2015

Drink Your Way to Healthier Hair

It's important that I mention this: you cannot have healthy hair if you don't have a healthy diet.

Photo credit: Photo Pin

No matter how many times you moisturize, deep condition, or wash your hair, you won't see much progress unless you also clean up your diet (i.e. watch what you eat on a daily basis) 

It's like when you're trying to lose weight; you can do all the sit-ups and jumping jacks you want, but you won't shed much weight until you change your eating habits.

Here's the first step to a healthier you: mind what you drink. 

Mane DOs: 

- Water
- 100% fruit juice from concentrate (Be careful, though; if the product is true to its word it'll have only 2 ingredients on its ingredients list: [insert your favorite fruit here] concentrate & water. No additives, no artificial sweeteners. Heck, no sweeteners at all. 
- Fresh fruit juices (these don't come in a box; buy fruits from the market & put your blender to use!)
- Blended vegetable juice (these also don't come in a box; grab that blender!)


Mane DON'Ts:

- Fruit drinks (yes, there's a difference; fruit drinks are like Kool-Aid, bitter lemon, Snapple, 5-Alive, etc.) 
- Soda/Pop/Mineral (different parts of the world call them different things; but these are basically Coke, Sprite, etc.)
- Malt drink 


Mane Tip: Add slices of fruit to your water. I like to use lemon. It's cheap, easy to find, flavors the water, and speeds up digestion (which is awesome for weight loss or weight maintenance!) 



Before I started my healthy hair journey, I used to drink orange juice ALL the time. My cousins used to tease me about this, by the way; they never understood how someone could drink o.j. 'round the clock. "O.j. is for breakfast! Try something new!" they'd always say. I only drank water occasionally, when I was really, really thirsty (usually after dance rehearsals or workout sessions). 

But when I started drinking 3-4 bottles each day, I noticed that my hair was able to retain more length in a shorter amount of time (in short, it seemed like my hair was growing "faster").

So try it out. Next time you sit to eat, go for water instead of soda. And when you're working at your computer, take a 5-minute water break and grab a glass to drink. Gradually increase your water intake each week, and in 3 months time you'll see that you'll even crave water before it's time for you to drink!

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