Really. True story!

I am gray haired. I mean like the sad old gray rabbit, my hair only has color in the back, underneath, and it ain’t cause I’m trendy, it is because that is where all the pepper gathers in the salt.

I am no longer what I was 20 years ago. I gained a lot during the great disaster, when I could not get the food I needed. I mean, a lot. And Hepatitis did a number on my liver, so I have this pooch above my waistline – Sidney tore the center of the muscles of that part of my belly apart, so any swelling of my liver makes my upper belly just fall out.

I’m eating more, and losing more, though every time I get sick with something I stop losing and gain some of it back. Most years I lose about 10 lbs. Did that for four years running, then gained 10 lbs back and sat there for two years of struggles with all sorts of things due to an immune issue. Then one day I started losing again, and am at a 10 year low now, 14 lbs lower than a year and a half ago. Mostly I don’t think about it. It just happens.

All I’m doing is just eating. Everything. All the food. The bread and the butter, the bacon and the bacon fat. I fry things in lard, I eat everything I want. The salt, the sugar, the msg. Bring it! We have a bowl full of chocolate and I eat as much as I want (quite a bit some days, and a LOT at first, but now many days I don’t have any of it at all, I just don’t need as much anymore since I started getting all my body craves). I have ice cream, fried chicken, lots of beef and pork and fish, I sometimes want a lot of vegetables, sometimes none at all. I eat lots of potatoes, and I eat quite a bit of rice and noodles. I drink a lot of juice and soda pop. I snack on cheese and crackers and chevre with sweet cherry tomatoes. Or praline pecans. Whatever.

The weight isn’t falling off. It is just sort of slowly evaporating off.

A few weeks ago I ordered 1 size smaller pants. They fit. Really good.

I dyed my hair, and it really does help me feel slimmer, and it helps me feel more fun. Weird… And I didn’t even dye it purple this time. Just brown.

I wonder how much lighter I’ll feel if I get my hair trimmed…?

SPECIAL NOTE: I was that woman, who had early gray. It started in my 30s, and it multiplied slowly. I was NEVER going to dye my hair. I am chemically sensitive, but that is not why.

Gray hair is not an indicator that you are lower value. It doesn’t mean you did something wrong to get it. It is not nature’s punishment for people who live wrongly too long. It just happens… it seems.

We do know that baldness and gray hair both occur due to loss of certain protein assembling capacity in your body. This means metabolic or mitochondrial dysfunction. While you CAN do things that make it worse (smoking, drinking alcohol, huffing air fresheners or Febreze, eating foods with contaminants, exposure to chlorine, paint or glue fumes, and ironically, hair dye, etc), for the most part, we didn’t do it to ourselves.

So there is NO SHAME in gray hair. I REFUSE to be shamed for it.

But I LIKE the way I look better with dark hair. I have COOL skin coloring, and gray makes me look sick… Or dead. NOT a good look for me. (That’s a joke, in case you missed it. I know, I’ve told it before.) Gray clashes with everything I love to wear, and even with my skin tones. Brown does not… as long as it is not that terrible orange brown color… That one makes me look VERY unhealthy.

I have learned to choose a dye that is not so hard on my body, and I’ve learned to reduce the hair loss from dying it, by cooling the water on my head before getting out, and NOT either pulling on the hair in the shower (don’t keep pulling it out hoping it will stop, it won’t), OR NOT brushing my hair until it is dried after dying it.

You see, dying hair LOOSENS hair follicles. COOLING the head, and DRYING the hair allows those follicles to tighten up again, and you don’t loose so much hair.

Just a few bits to help you understand why I had such gray hair, and then why I decided to dye it.

But really, purple is my favorite color.