I recently did a blog post about the curly girl method transition phase where I explained what it was, and answered some other related questions. A common question that I didn’t answer in that post is basically ‘how can I survive the transition phase?”. I thought that question was big enough to warrant its own post.
How To Make The Curly Girl Transition Phase More Tolerable
1. Wash your hair when you need to!
This is the biggest one, in my opinion. What makes the transition phase so challenging for many people is they decide they absolutely can’t wash their hair more than once every three days or four days or whatever timeframe. I do believe that it’s good to work on getting your hair used to being washed less frequently because daily shampooing can be drying. I don’t believe that the only way to “train” your hair to produce less oils is to go from daily washing to once-a-week washing.
Prior to trying the curly girl method I had been a daily washer, so I started by just moving to every other day at first. That was tolerable, 3+ days would not have been tolerable for me. I would have been insecure about how my hair looked, and felt. It wasn’t worth it to me!
Plus, if I just really messed up a wash day? I’d sometimes get right back in the shower and rewash just an hour after I washed the first time. I wasn’t willing to hate my hair the entire time between wash days, and one “extra” shampoo experience isn’t going to leave your hair super dry or otherwise cause major problems. If you’re itching to wash your hair – just wash it, you’ll be happier and your hair will be okay.