What My Hair Taught Me About Midlife Health

Elizabeth: [00:00:00] Have you ever had one of those moments where you realize the thing that you’ve been fighting all of your life that surrendering to the reality of it might actually be the thing that sets you free? Now, that was me with my body several years ago, but then again, just recently with my hair. Yes, my hair.

Now, I grew up hating my hair. I used to straighten it, dye it, do anything I could to get it to behave, because I thought that if I could just make it look like it was supposed to, which let’s be honest, is the styles that I saw growing up in magazines, that everything else would fall into place. A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to stop, and what happened next reminded me of everything that I know about taking care of our health and our bodies, because here’s the truth, nobody tells you.

No one else knows what will work [00:01:00] for you. There is no universal plan, no perfect product. No magic formula that’s guaranteed to work for every person’s hair, body or situation. And if you’ve ever felt like a failure because the diet didn’t work or the routine didn’t stick, this episode is for you. because what if you’re not doing it wrong?

What if the solution was never supposed to be someone else’s? So in today’s episode, I’m sharing the deeply personal, very slightly messy, totally liberating story that changed how I take care of myself and how you can too. So don’t skip this one.

Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast, the podcast for women over 40 who want peace with food, ease in their habits, and a body that they don’t have to fight with.

Hey there, and welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, [00:02:00] and I am so super glad that you are here today. So thank you so much for tuning in. Alright, so today I want to talk about hair and specifically my hair. Now stick with me for a minute because I know that you didn’t press play and tune in to hear about my beauty routine, but the truth is, my curly hair has brought me back to my learnings and teachings about health more than any other book or diet ever has.

Once I was able to see the connection, I couldn’t unsee it. And so therefore I needed to share this with you. So if you’ve ever felt frustrated with your body, your progress, or like the thing you’re doing is like you’re doing all of the things right, but still not getting the results, you’re gonna wanna hear this.

Now, I have curly, wavy hair and for most of my life I have struggled with it and I’ve always really disliked [00:03:00] it. It wasn’t naturally shiny, glossy, and silky like the hair that I saw in magazines growing up. I was always so incredibly envious of women who could just get out of the shower, run a comb through their hair, and like move on with their day.

My hair could not do that. In fact, it would probably look like a complete rat’s nest if I tried. I was jealous of women who could put their hair up in an effortless ponytail or a bun. My hair didn’t do what it was supposed to do.

It didn’t look like what I wanted it to. I’d have to blow it dry, straighten it. She’ll lack it with hairspray, and then hope to God the humidity didn’t make me look like a complete frizz ball. By lunchtime, it was a battle, and I fought like hell to win it because for years I believed what I think a lot of us believe, even if we’d never say it out loud, that if I could just fit in, look [00:04:00] the way that I thought I was supposed to, not curly and perceived messy, but sleek, tidy, and polished, that people would think that I was prettier.

And I would feel better about myself, more confident, more attractive, more in control, because let’s be honest here, hair is a big deal for women. We spend a lot of money on it, and so I dyed it. I chemically straightened it, and it was a lot of upkeep. Every few weeks or months, I’d have to schedule another appointment for color or straightening.

But then a few years ago after spending, I think probably six hours in the salon, I was just done with it. I got tired of it all. Tired of fighting what was natural. Tired of spending hours and loads of money trying to fix something that maybe wasn’t actually broken. Tired of chasing something that wasn’t permanent and needed so [00:05:00] much time and mental attention.

And so I stopped. I stopped coloring, I stopped straightening, and I decided once and for all that I was going to embrace what I had. I was gonna let it be like if the universe said that this is how I was made, I was just gonna accept it. The products that they make today for curly hair are so much better than what I experienced in it as a teen in the eighties.

Dippity do mousse that left your hair all crunchy. And so I thought it would be easier this time around and I thought. That was the end of the story, that this would be the part where I magically fall in love with my natural curls and as a 50-year-old and dance off into the sunset looking like, I don’t know, a L’Oreal commercial or something.

But guess what? That’s not what happened. So instead, I found myself smack dab in the [00:06:00] middle of a different type of frustration altogether because here’s what no one tells you. When you stop trying to control your hair or your body or anything else to fit into someone else’s mold, you don’t actually magically know what to do.

No one can tell you the exact steps that you need to take to achieve success. There’s no secret formula. There’s no one size fits all product and nobody, I mean, nobody can tell you exactly what’s gonna work for you, your hair, your body, and the lifestyle that you have. You have to figure it out through trial and error and observation and a lot of.

Unflattering wash days in subsequent day, two, three, and four hair. And you know what? That whole experience, the messiness of it, the questions, the doubt, the moments I almost gave up, [00:07:00] it reminded me of everything that I learned about real health when I was going through this process with my own body.

Because here’s the truth, How I was treating my body previously wasn’t really all that different. I guess I needed to learn the lesson again from a different angle. It made me remember, we want to abdicate responsibility. We do that by wanting someone else to give us the plan.

We want to follow the steps. We want guaranteed results with minimal inconvenience. When that doesn’t happen, oddly enough, we don’t blame the plan. We obviously blame ourselves, right? That’s why I wanna share this story with you, because if you’ve ever felt like you’re failing at your health or that something is wrong with you because the diet didn’t work [00:08:00] out for you, or you couldn’t stick with a plan, I want you to know it’s not you.

You are just expecting someone else’s solution to work for your very specific, very unique body. And unfortunately, that’s not how it works. So when I started wearing my hair, naturally, a friend of mine with curly hair sent me a YouTube video of an influencer who seemed to have hair just like mine. Great.

I just did what she did. Because I live in Mexico, I couldn’t exactly get the products that she used, and I was a little overwhelmed by all the steps and all of the products she was using a lot. I had no idea that it was going to be this difficult. I honestly just wanted someone to tell me what to do to buy the products for me, give them to me and say, do this, this, and this.

Like, please just tell me what to do so that I can get [00:09:00] the same results that the influencers get that I see on Instagram with beautiful, juicy bouncy curls. Can someone just hand me a step-by-step, foolproof guaranteed process to get salon worthy curls without spending an hour every day getting ready for work?

Ugh. There are so many products, so many different techniques. There’s curl cream, heat protectant, mose, gels, oils, all that create different results. There are different products and techniques based on whether you choose to air dry your hair or diffuse, and the language that I had to learn, refreshing, bonnets, plopping, wet plopping, micro plopping.

Spraying hands, raking, squishing, scrunching, and pixie diffusing. Like I remember watching curly hair tutorials on YouTube thinking, wait a minute, now I need to figure out my hair porosity and my curl type. How do I know if I’ve over moisturized my hair and [00:10:00] need protein? I didn’t even know that was a thing.

It was so incredibly overwhelming. And so I did what most of us do. I looked for someone who seemed to have figured it out, and I copied exactly what they were doing. And when that didn’t work out, I found another and copied her. And when that didn’t work out, I looked for another, I joined Facebook groups for wavy, curly haired women.

Yes, that is a thing. I bought the products, I followed the steps, I watched the endless videos, and. I spent so much money, hundreds of dollars on products that others loved that did not work for my hair. And oh my God, if that isn’t the most relatable metaphor for health, I don’t know what is. Because when it comes to health, eating, movement, weight, energy, we all want the same thing.

Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to eat, how much when, how to work [00:11:00] out, how to sleep better. How to make it all fit in between work, family, perimenopause, stress, and everything else that I have on my plate. I get it. That desire is real and it’s valid. You’re not lazy or weak or undisciplined for wanting any of that.

You’re just overwhelmed because we’ve been taught that health should be this straightforward formula, just follow the rules and get the result. When it doesn’t work, when you gain the weight back or your energy crashes, or your joints still ache, it’s easy to think, well, there must be something wrong with me. But here’s the problem, the model is broken.

The assumption that health is easy for everyone, that hair care is easy for everyone, is completely flawed. Just tell me what to do. Mindset puts your success in someone [00:12:00] else’s hands. It makes you believe that the answer is out there and in the right plan, and the right product, and the right morning routine.

And if you can’t make it work, the problem must be you. What if the problem isn’t you? What if the problem is expecting a universal answer to work on a highly specific, highly personal, ever changing human body? That’s the trap. We don’t need more rules. What we need is more discernment, more trust, more experimentation, more patience.

Maybe most of all, we need permission to say, if this doesn’t work for me, it doesn’t mean that I’m the thing that’s failing. It just means that I need a different approach. So once I realized that no one was going to rescue me with the perfect curly hair routine, I [00:13:00] did what most people do. I started throwing spaghetti at the wall, right?

I doubled down on Facebook Warriors, who honestly. Don’t know my hair any better than I do, but at least there was a little bit of personalization in their responses. And I invested in high quality products, believing that if I just spent more, that I would get better results. I bought creams and mousses and gels and oils, leave-in conditioners, frizz, serums, clarifying shampoos, co washes.

I could probably open a small boutique out of my bathroom right now. Some of them made my hair look stringy and oily and others left it flat and one highly recommended anti frizz line actually made it even frier. And the ones that did work, they only worked temporarily or for a few days. It was exhausting.

And what made it worse was [00:14:00] the advice. Some folks said that the products didn’t matter. It was all in the technique while others swore by certain products. Some said only use cold water for refreshing. While others said never to use a spray bottle to rewet your curls.

It was like standing in the middle of a crowd and every person is shouting something louder and different and just. Ah. Eventually I realized that I had to zoom out and look at the bigger picture because it wasn’t just about finding the right products or techniques. It was about figuring out what worked for me, my hair, the climate that I live in, my routine, my expectations, and the time I had available to me.

And so I started experimenting and paying attention. I noticed that certain ingredients made my hair frizz in the humidity, which I live in Mexico by the ocean, so that’s kind of a big [00:15:00] deal. And I learned that my hair behaves differently depending on the time of year, how I sleep, how much I work out. I style it, same products, different technique, and totally different results, and I realized this is exactly like the process that I took with my health.

I couldn’t believe that I expected that I would just stop straightening my hair, use some gel, and right off into the sunset. It’s the naivety that we have. The first time we do a diet, we expect that it, the diet will solve all of our problems and be the solution. And this is exactly how it works with our bodies.

The products, well, those are your foods. Some are nourishing, some make you feel sluggish, some look good on paper, but don’t feel good in your body and some that work great for your friend. Might do nothing for you. [00:16:00] The styling techniques now, that’s your mindset. It’s how you apply the habits, how you eat, exercise, manage your stress and emotions.

Are you approaching your meals with restriction and anxiety? Are you constantly starting over expecting perfect results by Thursday and the preservation methods now that’s your self-care. It’s what allows the work you did today to last into tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.

It’s like protecting your curls overnight so that they don’t get stretched out and flattened as you sleep or exercise.

Now we need the same care for our mental and emotional wellbeing so that we don’t crash and burn by Friday because we’ve been white knuckling our health all week long. It’s not just about the foods you eat or the workouts that you choose, it’s how and why you do them.

It’s how you support your choices [00:17:00] with the life that you’re actually living. So when we ask what’s the right plan? We’re actually asking the wrong question. The better question is, what works for me, for my body, my goals, my lifestyle, my preferences, my capacity? That’s where everything starts to change.

Now, I’m not gonna lie, there were so many moments in this process where I thought, you know, maybe I should just give up, start straightening my hair again and just. Be done with it. Maybe my hair is just the kind that can’t look good without a flat iron and a round brush and 45 minutes of my life every single morning.

Maybe I’m just not meant to have those bouncy, shiny, defined curls that other women post about and let’s be honest. If you’ve ever tried to eat healthier or move more, or take better care of yourself, and you still feel [00:18:00] exhausted, bloated, stuck, or just plain discouraged, you’ve probably thought the same thing about your body, right?

Maybe I’m too far gone. Maybe I should just give up and be fat. Maybe this only works for other people. From there, the shame spiral kicks in. You start second guessing every decision. You start comparing yourself to that woman in your workout class who looks like she has it all together. You start projecting that she somehow has time to meal prep, foam roll, and floss, not knowing anything else about her circumstances.

You start quietly beating yourself up for not sticking with something that wasn’t even designed for you in the first place. And it is so incredibly subtle. You might not even notice that it’s happening, but it creeps in this low hum of, there’s something wrong with me that just sits there in the background [00:19:00] of your brain.

Now here’s what I wanna say about that. There’s actually nothing wrong with you. Trying something and realizing that it doesn’t work. That’s not failure, that’s just feedback. It’s just data. It’s just more information about what your body does and does not respond to. And yeah, it can feel frustrating wondering what am I supposed to do?

Try every product known to man so that I can eliminate them all. Especially if you’re the kind of woman who’s capable and used to figuring things out quickly. Just because it’s not instant, doesn’t mean it’s impossible. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just learning. And honestly, that’s one of the bravest things I know how to do.

Keep showing up with curiosity when the world has told you over and over again that you should have figured this out by now.

And so after enough trial [00:20:00] and error and a couple of moments where I seriously considered just chopping it all off, I decided to do something different. I actually hired someone to help me, not just anyone, someone who wasn’t part of an MLM or selling a product line. She wasn’t there to sell me something.

She was just there to teach me and help me learn about my hair. She helped me understand why many of the products that I had bought didn’t work and what ingredients actually mattered, not only for my hair type, but for the results I wanted for the climate of where I live. And she explained why living in a humid coastal climate made certain products useless on me, even if they worked beautifully for someone else in the Facebook group with similar hair.

She gave me language for the things I was noticing, but I couldn’t actually name. And that education, that neutral, [00:21:00] non-branded, let’s figure this out together, kind of support. That was a turning point because suddenly I wasn’t just guessing. I knew what to look for and what to avoid. I wasn’t copying and pasting someone else’s routine and hoping for the best.

I could actually make informed choices moving forward. And I understood why certain things worked and other things didn’t, and maybe most importantly, I started feeling less lost and more in charge. Now, let me be clear. My hair still is not perfect. The curls aren’t uniform. It’s got gray, which I don’t love because I feel like it washes me out and some days it does its own thing, which quite honestly, I’ve just learned to accept at this point.

And yeah, I am working on still finding the right haircut, but most days I look in the mirror and I think, you know what? It’s good [00:22:00] enough not because I’ve given up. Not because I’ve lowered my standards, but because I’ve changed my standards. And some days I look at myself in the mirror and I even like what I see.

I stopped chasing this polished, neat, tidy version of my hair that never was supposed to exist, and I started embracing the version of me that does the one that’s lived in this body for 56 years, the one that’s been through some stuff. The one who no longer needs to apologize for her softness, her strength, her lines, or her quirks.

True health isn’t about looking like someone else’s ideal or a magazine cover. It’s not about abs or perfect macros or that magical before and after photo. It’s about peace. It’s about clarity. It’s about energy and freedom and feeling like yourself when you wake up in the morning before [00:23:00] the makeup, before the green smoothie, before the checklist.

That’s what I want for you, not perfection. Not performance, just the kind of alignment where your outside reflects your inside and you get to like them both. If there’s one thing I want you to take from this episode, it’s this. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken, you’re not lazy, you’re not behind, you’re not doing it wrong.

You have just been trying to use someone else’s formula on your very specific, very personal body. And of course, it’s frustrating when it doesn’t work. When your expectations don’t meet reality. Of course, it makes you question yourself, but that doesn’t mean that you are the problem. It just means the solution wasn’t designed for you.

So what do you do? You stop following everyone else’s path and you [00:24:00] start making your own. You start looking for the lowest hanging fruit in your life. The thing that feels doable right now, maybe it’s drinking more water. Maybe it’s getting to bed 30 minutes earlier. Maybe it’s not skipping breakfast. You don’t have to overhaul everything.

You just start where you are. And if you’re not sure what that first step should be, I’ve got something that can help. It’s called the eight basic Habits that Healthy People do, and it’s the foundation that I use with every single client that I work with now. It’s not flashy, it’s not trendy, but it works because they are adaptable and they’re the foundation of health.

And these habits are simple, sustainable, and tailored to your real life. Not fantasy life, not diet, culture, life, but your life. And if you build them, if you focus on these eight things, one step at a [00:25:00] time, not only will you achieve optimal health for your stage in life. I also truly believe that you will never need another diet again.

You can grab the guide and checklist right now. Go to elizabeth sherman.com/habits. The link will also be in the show notes. So start there. Let it be enough, and know that I’m right here with you, supporting you, cheering you on, not towards perfection, but towards acceptance and peace. All right. That’s all I have for you today.

Have an amazing day, and I will talk to you next time. Bye bye.

Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the health advice out there and looking for something that’s straightforward, my eight basic habits that healthy people do, guide and checklist is just what you need. It breaks down essential habits into simple, actionable steps that you already know how to do.

By following these habits, you’ll set yourself on a path to better health, [00:26:00] surpassing most people that you know. To get your free copy, just click the link in the show notes or go to elizabeth sherman.com/habits. It’s an easy start, but it could make all the difference in your health journey. Grab your guide today and take the first step towards a healthier you.