Bad Behaviors to Avoid

No Extreme Dieting.

I'm going to say this straight up:

I don't care how many supplements you chow down and how many gallons of water you drink, you cannot fool your body into believing it's healthy if you are in the process of starving it. I don't give a g*ddamn what your pro-ana and bulimic friends tell you, you just cannot. I'm not your mom, and I don't even know you. I have absolutely no reason to BS you. But face facts. Hollywood celebs and starlets may walk around at under 100lbs while sporting glorious, flowing manes of hair, but they're wearing wigs or extensions. Those red-carpet pics taken at the Oscars are not reality, girl. Professional working celebrities are fake from the tips of their nylon hair right down to their painted toes, because they are paid to be.

You cannot starve yourself, eat bottle after bottle of vitamins and dietary supplements, and still have the long, thick hair that signifies a vital body in the pink of health.

Eat right. Period.

Hair Supplements are Snake Oil.

For the typical person, hair grows at about a half-inch a month, as I've said elsewhere in these pages. Period. If you are desperate to have longer hair for a wedding or prom, or you've just gotten The Worst Haircut In Human History and miss your longer locks, it can be easy to fool yourself into believing that the supplements you just took made your hair grow three inches overnight, but I can assure you they didn't and it didn't. While good health can help your hair grow as briskly as possible, a bottle of supplements with a picture of Crystal Gayle on it will not turn you into Cousin Itt. What it will do is sit on your credit card gathering interest. Eat right, ignore the bottle of hair-growing pills in the GNC, handle your hair gently, and wear it up. Cultivate patience, not magic pills.

Don't Chop It All Off In Anger or Frustration.

This one seems strange, but I can guarantee there are a lot of women out there who will read this and nod their heads in self-recognition.

Do not get angry with your hair (or your weight, your kids, or your life) and chop it off because it's not growing fast enough to suit you. That will only put you even further back from your goal. In an effort to punish your hair, you will be punishing only yourself. It will not get long overnight, and if you currently have a pixie and want it at waist-length, that will take you several long, boring years of growth. I strongly encourage you to get into the habit of ignoring your hair, because that time will pass eventually, and in six years, you will either find yourself six years older with the hair you always wanted, or six years older knowing that had you not cut it all off over and over, you would have had the hair you wanted.

Either way, you gun be six years olda, so just sit tight and let your follicles do their thing.

What All This Boils Down To

There are no shortcuts, no cheater's ways, no methods for speeding up time. Long hair takes gentle handling and patience, and that's about it. No starvation, no secret pills, and especially no frustrated chops. Time and care. People turn themselves in knots to avoid this conclusion, and there's just no avoiding it. They lay out a lot of wasted money and effort to avoid staring it in the face, convince themselves of all sorts of ridiculous quackery, false promises, and exaggerated claims.

It's all bunk. Keep your money in your pocket and just wait it out. The stuff grows on its own, after all, with no conscious effort on your part. Time and care, that's literally all it takes. The "secret" is realizing this, instead of twisting yourself in knots to avoid it.