curly girl method – month four progress

It’s been 4 months since I ditched sulfates, silicones and regular shampooing. I have to say I am sold on the Curly Girl Method!

Let me tell yall, I think I could be 4 YEARS in and still learn something new from all the curly experts on Instagram. It’s almost overwhelming but I’m looking at it as a fun experiment to find what’s best for my hair.

The progress pictures this month aren’t great, and I expected that a little bit due to pregnancy. I really only got in one good month of Curly Girl method before becoming pregnant and there is a chance my hair is reacting to that some.

My past pregnancies have given me frizzy, dry hair with less curl.
Regardless, I’m almost always happy with how my hair is coming out these days and I think I’ve only done 2-3 ponytails at work since I started this method. I am ashamed at just how often I used to wear a pony tail to work! It was more like 2-3 times a week!

Here are some photos of how my hair is coming out after wash days lately:

Something different this month was trying out a new technique—rake, wet, scrunch. Instead of letting my hair form curly clumps in the shower while sopping wet and THEN applying product, I dried my hair with a t shirt after the shower and then BRUSHED in product.

I know, this doesn’t sound right. I actually was really nervous that even a pony tail wouldn’t fix the mistake I was making by brushing.

The idea behind the “rake wet scrunch” method is that you brush in/rake in product to hair that isn’t sopping wet. This way, you allow the product to get everywhere. Then, you go back and spray down your product covered hair and let the curly clumps form. Then scrunch it and then plop if you want and then diffuse.

The difference is, these clumps are coated inside and out with the products of your choice. With my old method, the clumps were just formed with water, and product was scrunched on over the curls, but really only touched the outside of the curl, leaving all that hair inside the curl without product.

Hopefully that makes sense. I tried it and am really happy with the results. I wouldn’t say my hair looks better or worse, but it definitely didn’t turn into the frizzy mess I thought it would.

This was the first attempt, trying to show you the back because it seemed to make more of a difference back there:

Products I am using lately ( in the right order) include:

Shampoo with Cantu Sulfate-Free shampoo (only every so often, maybe every 5 washes)
Condition with Not Your Mother’s conditioner
Cantu Curl Activator Cream (tiny tiny amount)
Marc Anthony Curl Define Lotion
Aussie Instant Freeze gel

I am also still obsessed with my in-shower comb. I can’t believe I went so long in my life without this thing. How much water have I wasted standing in the shower trying desperately to untangle knots with my hands?! I won’t even travel without mine now.

Thank you for following along with my Curly Girl journey. In a week or so I am going to give a rice water rinse tutorial. I did try it this month but it turns out I lost my strainer…and I ended up with bits of rice in my hair. Oops!