I know about CG, now I want to be a CG!

So last blog post was explaining what CG is. This one will help you become CG if you want to be.

The first thing you have to do is do one last sulfate wash. This will get all the silicones out of your hair and give you clean hair to work with. Once you do your last sulfate wash, it's time for your first conditioner wash or cowash.

Cowash

Cowashing is washing your hair with conditioner. You need to find a light, silicone free conditioner. The most popular choices on nc.com seem to be the Suave Natural and the VO5 lines. My fave is Suave coconut or green apple, VO5 seems to be to light for me. Wavies may love it though. There are lots of other options but these seem to be the easiest to find and the cheapest.

Wet your hair and use a puddle of conditioner to scrub your scalp with your fingertips, no nails. The amount of conditioner will vary depending on your hair and how much you have or how hydrated it is. Your hair may soak it all up so if you need more use it. I use 2-3 puddles most days. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Scrub until your arms are tired. I scrub the bottom of my scalp right side up and the top of my scalp upside down for better access. Do whatever works best for you, just scrub your entire scalp. When your arms are tired, rinse. But guess what you get to do while you rinse? Scrub! This is going to get all the dirt and oils out without using shampoo!

Condition

After you have cowashed, you want to condition. This works just like conditioning before except your conditioner won't have silicones in it. You want to use a thicker, more moisturizing conditioner. I love GVP Conditioning Balm from Sally's and Yes to Carrots from Target but there are soo many options. I'll go over my favorite products in the next post or two. Now is the time to detangle too. Remember, we already talked about only detangling under conditioner supervision ?!? Once the conditioner is on your hair you can use your fingers or a wide tooth comb to detangle. I find that this also helps to distribute the conditioner around every strand of my hair. Let the conditioner set to get as much moisture as possible, while you finish up the rest of your shower, then rinse. You can either rinse fully or partially (leaving some in to act as your leave in), play with it. I rinse fully most of the time.

Styling

This is where personal preference and hair type really come into play. If you are a wavy you may need a stronger hold then if you have tight curls. Watch for those silicones when you pick something. I like to get the travel sizes from Walmart or Target when I'm just trying a product out for the first time. I'm going to tell you about what I do. You can try different methods and amounts of products and find the routine that works best for you.

Right out of the shower I flip my head upside down and run a wide tooth comb through my hair. After I'm sure the tangles are out I grab my leave in and apply some all over. I finger comb my leave in in but you can scrunch it in or not use one. My hair behaves best with a leave in though. After my leave in, I scrunch in my frizz control. I'm in love with the generic Walmart brand KY Jelly for this. It has the same ingredients as the more expensive frizz control stuff and you can get it around town. Most of the frizz stuff you find in the stores isn't CG friendly. I use about a pea sized dollop each for my head leaning to the right side, head leaning to the left side, and upside down. Repeat with my gel. Current love is Herbal Essence Totally Twisted Gel. After my gel I scrunch out the water with my t-shirt and either plop (I'll talk about that later) or just air dry and go.

Curly Girl

So you've had a few days to play with new methods and kick some of your current hair sins to the curb. Have you had any luck? How's the hair been looking? Mine's been great. I got some amazing 2nd day hair yesterday and some decent 3rd day hair today. :) Have you done any reading on your own? If you have today's blog might be old news, if not, I hope you learn something.

It's time to talk about Curly Girl or CG for short. CG is a method for caring for Curly Hair. I found it through a book titled Curly Girl written by Lorraine Massey. When I first read it, I thought it sounded cool but wasn't convinced. I later found a website that was specifically for Curlies, naturallycurly.com or nc.com for short. So many curlies post on the CurlTalk section of this website and a lot of them follow the CG method. They are sooooo much help. If you interested in seeing some results of people making the switch from whatever they were doing before to CG, look here on CurlTalk on nc.com. Basically what the CG method consist of is cutting out silicones (chemicals that are in a lot of styling products and conditioners) so that you can cut out sulfates (chemicals that are in a lot of shampoos).

Shampoos

Most shampoos have sulfates in them. Sulfates are what strips any oils and/or grease off of things. If you look at a bottle of dish washing detergent and compare it to a bottle of shampoo you will most likely find that their top two ingredients are the same. Most people would think, "Well , my scalp produces oil and that makes my hair look greasy so I need to use shampoo to get it out." This can be true for people with straight hair. Curly hair is drier and more fragile then straight hair. We need that oil. Curlies, you will also most likely find that as you strip out less of the oils in your hair your scalp won't produce as much. Sulfates strip every bit of it away leaving us dry and frizzy and moisture starved.

Just so you know, sulfates are listed in your ingredient list as:

Sodium Laureth Sulfate

Sodium Laurel Sulfate

Ammonium Laurel Sulfate

When I started this method I didn't understand how my hair and scalp would get clean if I didn't use shampoo. It turns out that conditioners have surfactants in it. Surfactants clean our hair just as well as sulfates without pulling all of our moisture away. So surfactants are the way to go for curlies. You just scrub your scalp with conditioner the way you used to with shampoo and tada, your clean. One down side to this is if we are using surfactants we have to watch what else we are using.

Silicones

Silicones are in tons of hair products and they are used to coat the cuticle of your hair and make it lay down. Sticking up cuticles are what attract moisture and cause frizz and fly aways. So while they control frizz, good, they also don't come off easily, bad. Most silicones are not water soluble. You have to use a sulfate cleanser to get a silicon off. This is why people have to use shampoo with sulfates.

Reading labels

This, curlies, is something you are going to get pretty good at. To figure out if something is CG friendly, which you now know means that you don't need a sulfate to get it out of your hair, you have to read the ingredient labels. I have a short list of no-no's. All the no-no's, as you will notice, end in -cone, -conol, or -xane. They are all silicones.

No-no's

Dimethicone

Dimethiconol

Phenyl trimethicone

Amodimethicone

Cyclomethicone

Cyclopentasiloxane

Silicones are tricky though because some have been altered to dissolve in water. If there is a PEG- or a PPG- in front of your silicone then you are good to go. Look out for more then one silicone in a product. One no silicone means it's no good for CG even if there are others in the same product that have a PEG or PPG.

Wow, that's a lot to learn. Here is your task for today. Go read the labels of your favorite hair products. Learn if there are any silicones in your conditioner or stylers and take a good look at that sulfate in your shampoo. It's kind of fun once you get used to it.