Over the next few weeks, I kept thinking back to my conversation with Thomas and my own hair. My rate of hair loss had, in fact, increased considerably over the past couple of months. My hair was thinning all over and in some areas I had no hair at all.
When I was at home, I would think about my hair loss very often. I frequently combed my hair in an attempt to convince myself that I still had a healthy mane. However, doing this just made it clearer to me that I had to do something to stop my hair from disappearing. Pretty soon, I was thinking about my hair loss every free moment that I had. I would reminisce back to my college days, when I had a full head of hair and the word "thinning" meant nothing to me.
On my way to work, I would see many executives dressed to the nines, but with severely receding hairlines. While running through Central Park, I would see fitness buffs with great bodies, but many were bald, or close to it. A good number of these men were only in their twenties and thirties.
I started to do research about the causes of hair loss on the internet, and I came across the Norwood Scale, a scale that shows the progression of male pattern baldness with the use of images. I realized that I was in between a Norwood 3 and 4. I had a substantial amount of hair loss on my scalp, and what was even more worrisome to me was how much hair I had lost recently. I felt that if I did not do something pretty quickly, I would soon be bald.
I also realized that my hours at work were not going to get better any time soon. The long hours had, in turn, led me to develop poor eating habits, and I was not eating a balanced diet. I was eating a lot of food that had a high fat content and very little in the way of nutritional value. To top it off, my workout regimen had also suffered. I was thinking about my hair loss so much, that I often missed workouts because I had lost my motivation to go to the gym.