10 Healthy Habits To Practice During NoFap.

Man Don't Fap
9 min readMay 11, 2021

Nofap is not just a 90-days challenge. It is a lifestyle. It’s about improving overall as a person and becoming a better version of yourself.

ManDontFap Streak-o-meter

When you start nofap, you’ll automatically feel motivated towards improving other aspects of life as well and thanks to the healing dopamine reward system, you’ll start enjoying these little accomplishments and get healthy dopamine from it. You can use that excess energy, and channelize it into these habits.

Many people complain that they are not able to experience any benefits of NoFap. The reason behind this is that “You are just not fapping?” There are a few things which you have to do before starting or during a nofap journey to have a overall life improving experience. The point of Nofap isn’t to avoid sexual pleasures completely. (Until you are practicing Semen Retention or Monk mode). In fact Nofap helps maximizing pleasure by encouraging you to seek out authentic experiences instead of fake ones.

Disclaimer:

This doesn’t mean that semen retention isn’t effective in itself or quitting porn won’t help. Those are life-changing decisions but now that you’re dedicated to improving, why not use that drive on other areas of your life too.

1. Meditation

This habit is non-negotiable for you, or any porn addict out there. If I was only allowed to keep one good habit, meditation would be my top pick. It has a ripple effect that really carries another benefit into pretty much every single area of your life. All of the other habits listed below only become effective because of meditation (that includes NoFap).

The number one trick while starting a new habit (so that it sticks) is to make the habit ‘easy to do’ and ‘less time-consuming’. For beginners out there, start with baby steps. 5–10 minutes per day. Then gradually increase your sessions as you become accustomed to it.

There are numerous benefits of continuous meditation but we’ll stick with what you stand to gain emotionally, and what it will do to your prefrontal cortex. Study says brain regions associated with attention, interception and sensory processing will literally become thicker.

⦁ Nothing builds up the volume of the prefrontal cortex area of the brain faster than a consistent meditation practice. Research out of a project at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany has pointed to mindfulness meditation as the type of meditation that really builds up this region

⦁ When you meditate consistently, your brain secretes healthy D2 dopamine. Remember that we were using porn to cope with our difficulties/problems. And we became addicted to porn because of the unhealthy dopamine it would secrete which made us feel good for just an instance.

⦁ Mindfulness meditation helps you separate your thoughts from yourself. The whole point of practicing mindfulness meditation is to be mindful of one’s thoughts.

⦁ Reduces Stress

⦁ Controls Anxiety

⦁ Increases concentration & Self-awareness.

2. Working Out

NoFap will leave you with a lot of energy, that you’re either going to utilize in your favor, or you’re gonna go crazy.

Working out is an instant source of willpower. It is also another good source of healthy dopamine and endorphins that would last. Working out makes you a more attractive person in your physical aspects. Regular exercise can transform you and it can literally change your physical appearance. Having a built, well-toned body can place you a few steps ahead in the dating hierarchy if that’s what you are looking for.

While resistance training with weights helps you improve strength and overall health, cardio has its own unique set of benefits. It increases stamina and endurance. You stop getting tired easily and feel more energetic.

Additionally, working out releases more testosterone hormone in your body which has been dubbed as the attraction hormone by scientists after several years of research. As you maintain a regiment of exercise your body fat percentage drops, your flexibility and strength increase (less chance of injury) your lifespan extends, immune system gets bolstered, you maintain your youth longer, you carry over a sustained vigor to other parts of your life, your resting heart rate goes down, and you have a general feeling of well being.

3. Tracking Your Food.

Your diet is a vital part of your performance, mental strength, willpower, and your existence as a whole. You might be wondering what a healthy diet has to do with nofap.

Let’s just discuss some of those benefits you stand to gain with your nofap if you adopt this habit.

⦁Eating healthy during nofap boosts your willpower.

⦁Eating healthy and consuming an adequate amount of water gives you clearer skin, which makes you much more attractive.

⦁Eating healthy improves your immunity.

We highly recommend you to check whether or not you are getting enough micro and macro nutrients, all while fulfilling the adequate calorie requirement based on your goal of gaining/losing weight and building muscles.

4. Quitting Existing Bad Habits

Imagine you’re on a boat, stuck in the middle of an ocean, trying to head to a nearby island. Your good habits are like oars that you can use to help bring the boat towards the destination, or the wind on the sails moving it there. Your bad habits, on the other hand, are like great big gaping holes in the boat. It doesn’t matter how hard you row, if you have holes in the boat, you’re going to sink.

These bad habits can be things like PMO, smoking, eating junk food, alcohol, other drugs. They’ll all set you back big time. Try to get a hold of these habits during your NoFap Streak.

So how can you build habits then? Do it based on willpower. The big difference is not to say to yourself “I’m gonna read 20 pages every day because I’m so motivated to gain knowledge.” But that you say “I’m going force myself to start reading everyday because I will have enough willpower to always do that.” The key is that if you make the requirements so small that you can always do it, you will never fail.

Another major change that you need to implement in your daily life is Improving Your Sleep Schedule. There are good reasons to wake up early (5–6–7 AM). The best quality of sleep you can get is the sleep between 10 and 12. If you’re still awake at 00:00 your brain produces cortisol and adrenaline to keep you awake. This isn’t healthy. Good sleep improves cognitive function, vitality and motivation. There are many more benefits to a good sleeping schedule.

5. Reading & Gaining Knowledge

Someone once asked Warren Buffet about keys to success, and he said

“Read 500 pages every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

Buffet read 600 to 1,000 pages daily when beginning his career as an investor.

Think about what you expose yourself to. Ask yourself, If you engage yourself with this material every day, what would the long term effects be? Instead of spending time on Instagram pages and other websites if you direct yourself towards some good books, podcasts, helpful courses, articles and videos, then they will end up changing your whole life. Learning new things & concepts is an easy habit to put off and you need to make it a priority. If you’re not regularly reading then you may start to fall asleep as you pick up a book. Your mind is not conditioned properly and you need to force yourself through that period. If you find reading conventional books difficult, you can switch to audiobooks which also helps you save some time as you can listen to them while working out or commuting etc. Your reading/listening ability and comprehension do pick up over time — just stick to it. Your understanding and awareness would grow so large that the value and wisdom you could offer other people would be incredible.

6. Setting a Goal

This is a major one. Most of us have huge dreams and vague goals of what we want to achieve, but only a very small percentage of us actually sets realistic/specific goals (bitter truth) and a planned roadmap to achieve them. If you don’t have specific goals, it’s like trying to get to a destination without a map or a compass. By setting specific goals, you can work backward from your destination and figure out the best path to get there.

In case of NoFap you can start small if you are struggling with keeping longer streaks. Then gradually increase your goal. Aim for 5 or 7-day streak. You might relapse a couple of times but eventually, you’ll make it. Once you reach the 7-day mark, increase your goal to 10 or maybe 14 days. Same goes for other aspects of improvement as well. You may find it difficult in the beginning but if you stick long enough, you are destined to get better at it.

7. Maintaining your Journal

Keeping a journal is actually something I started because of NoFap. Writing my NoFap journals inside the MDF app has really helped me to keep me focused on my journey especially during the tough times.

MDF Journal

Even a private journal is immensely beneficial. It’s great to be able to go back and see how you’ve progressed over time. Another thing is, it’s a part of our nature to always feel like our goals are distant and difficult/impossible to achieve when we set them but then when we do achieve them, often we forget ever setting such goals. This is where the Journal features helps you.

9. Social Activities

Humans are born into social groups and live their entire lives as a part of society, so the social element can’t easily be removed from the evolution of an individual. But how does social contact affect our health?

After all, in order for a species to survive, its members have to not only procreate, but also be able to shield their offspring from harm and shield peers from injury, so that they can derive strength from collaboration in the face of adversity.

Research has shown that by interacting with others, we actually train our brains. Social motivation and social contact can help to improve memory formation and recall and protects the brain from neurodegenerative diseases.

“Face-to-face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters and, like a vaccine, they protect you now, in the present, and well into the future, so simply […] shaking hands, giving somebody a high-five is enough to release oxytocin, which increases your level of trust, and it lowers your cortisol levels, so it lowers your stress.”

— Susan Pinker

It also increases confidence and self-esteem, lowers blood pressure and risk of Alzheimer’s.

Enjoying close social ties — with friends, partners, or family members — can make us happy and improve our overall life satisfaction in the long run.

10. Practicing Gratitude

Being grateful is the secret recipe for happiness. Often we take what we have for granted. By being grateful and expressing our gratitude for what we have, we can feel better and happier because we often find out we have more that we care about than we initially realized. It also helps with generally learning to be positive even in tough times. If you focus on finding things to be grateful for even when you’re not feeling the best, it allows you to always see the good in everything.

If you find this article helpful, please clap and share it with others. Now you can support us on patreon too.

Also leave a comment about your personal experience and what else topics you want us to cover.

--

--

Man Don't Fap

One stop app for your addiction recovery and daily motivation.