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I only wash it once or twice a week since it's naturally dry, and I always use conditioner. If I use any product on it, my hair just looks greasy or flat.
My diet is hard to pin down, it always changes. I don't eat dairy though.
An example from yesterday:
Breakfast = 2 waffles with vegan butter and 1 chicken sausage, plus coffee with almond milk
Lunch = Noodles, a side salad and a vegan chocolate bar
Snacks = some chickpea fritter thing and a few pieces salmon jerky
Dinner = crab cakes, and fried pickles + glass of absinthe
My thyroid is normal, I actually had blood work done recently, and it came out normal.
Oil treatments. You can use store bought treatments, or you can make your own. Even home remedies that you find, they all talk about oil...coconut oil, olive oil, etc.
Your diet is lacking good fats. You need to eat healthy fats for shiny hair and good skin. Eat some coconut oil, avocados, fish oil, some nuts. Also you might take some biotin. Hot oil treatments might also help you hair, and do a diluted vinegar rinse after washing.
Apple cider vinegar and rinse with cold, cold water. Then pour one or two drops of argon oil in the palm of your hand and rub it through your hair while it's still wet.
Shine, shine, shine. (As you can see, my hair is very dry and coarse - but it's shining!)
Add salmon to your diet and eat it frequently. Or take fish oil daily. You need fats. And fish oil fats are healthy. If you are averse to fish, you could try flax seed oil. The shine will take time though. The old hair has to grow out and be cut off. Once you add some healthy fats to your diet, the new hair should look shinier.
I only wash it once or twice a week since it's naturally dry, and I always use conditioner. If I use any product on it, my hair just looks greasy or flat.
Any advice?
All of the diet and styling advice given on this thread is good advice, however your genes supersede all of that if you inherited naturally dry, coarse hair. Since you only wash once or twice a weak and don't heat style, I doubt you are doing anything to cause the dryness/coarseness. Your diet, generally, looks fine. You could probably use a little more of this and/or a little less of that, like every other person on the planet...but your diet isn't in the realm of being so unhealthy and under nourishing that it would affect your hair (I mean...it's not falling out, right?).
Something to note...the shine standards for hair today are somewhat extreme level (just like the whiteness standards for teeth...fluorescent white is not a color found in nature).
The level of shine on a lot of celebrity and model manes is also not completely natural and is achieved via professional salon treatments (glaze treatments, gloss treatments, keratin treatments)...i.e., don't sweat it too much...most people's hair really is not THAT much more naturally shinier than yours. They just do more crap to it behind the scenes.
And then, there is the heat styling. You probably refrain from doing it since you're afraid of damaging your hair and making it more coarse. But heat styling is what turns dry/coarse/frizzy hair shiny.
In that pic quoted in your post above, the hair may or may not have a natural amount of God given shine...but one thing is for sure...it has been heat styled....looks like a combination of a good old fashioned blow out (or possibly a flat iron), as well as a large barrel curling iron on the ends.
I don't think it's necessary to avoid heat styling altogether. I have thick/coarse/frizzy hair too. I use a flat iron or a curling iron 2-3 times a week. The rest of the time I style my hair in a low pony, braid or a bun. Weekends are au natural. I use a tourmaline ceramic iron (which is best for sealing in moisture and not snagging/snapping damaged hair). I also try to use a heat protectant spray. My hair is no worse for the wear. My hair is super shiny on the heat styling days (and I hardly have to use any product). On the au natural days, no amount of pomade, serum, lotion, oil or spray can give it the same smooth shine as a heat styling.
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. I use Diamond Oil by Redken or Oi Oil by Davines, which has silicones.
