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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1523 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 11, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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So does NoFap/Semen Retention actually do anything? Or is it all a bunch of bullshit?

People’s go-to strategy to increase motivation is to make their life suck. Nofap is effective at that, pure loss with no upside.

Not my thing. Wouldn’t wish it on my worse enemy. Nofap makes you horny, obviously, but what isn’t said enough is that it makes you lonely, tense, angry, too.

Positive vs negative discipline.

Positive discipline is doing things that are good but that require the completion of a behavior; working out, reading more, writing more, learning a new skill, whatever.

Negative discipline is abstaining from things - mostly that are bad from you - but, more generally, that you want to abstain from for whatever reason in order to shift habits. Drinking and drugs, obviously, are the big ones. But this is also dieting, masturbation, social media consumption, etc.

Positive discipline activities give you a generous feeling of accomplishment and instant reward. "I worked out today!" Negative discipline is more complex - while it creates, for me, a sense of "momentum" and the feeling that I'm "on a streak", if I focus too much on it it warps into an "oh no, don't break the streak!" feeling of anxiety or anticipation. So, the mental model I use is to treat it like a savings or investment account - set it up to be automatic, then don't think about it. Check in on the "balance" every once in a while and smile as it will often be larger than you remember.

I like this framing!

Positive discipline activities give you a generous feeling of accomplishment and instant reward. "I worked out today!"

Do people really feel this way about exercise? To me it always feels like pointless effort for a reward that never comes. It's a hopeless fight to slow the pace of inevitable regression.

Yes, the happy chemicals after picking up the heavy things or covering a long distance makes me happy. The heavy things also have numbers on them, and if you keep doing it, you can watch the numbers go up.

The heavy things also have numbers on them, and if you keep doing it, you can watch the numbers go up.

The analogy I make to guys who don't lift but are into vidya is, it's like an RPG but IRL. (With a few exceptions) When you first start 2pl8 (100 kg) bench is like the first world boss. You'll get smacked down if you approach it without enough XP or skill. But once you level up a bit it just becomes random fodder you blow by in your warmups. You get to pick where to devote training/XP to, strength, size, endurance, etc. And have manna (recovery) you have to manage.

The inevitable regression does suck, but the meta is always changing. You'll see influencers go from "functional" training to pure strength. Then to bodybuilding/aesthetics. Then they'll pick up running. I suspect it's because one training modality does become stale when you saturate that attribute or regress. But having good general physical preparedness lets you transition to all sorts of things as your life evolves.

Are you 'Throwaway05' as well? The phraseology and semi-trolling strategy seem similar.

I am not this man!

Not sure I would say this person's writing resembles mine but that's the kinda thing I'd have limited ability to assess.

Also not sure how I feel about being accused of semi-trolling. I do earnestly believe we increasingly have the evidence base and research on outcomes to conclude that free will is pretty damn limited.

Not sure if I've been up to other stuff that could be considered trolling other than my excessive arguing with that one guy a few months ago.

On a related note some people get pleasure from exercise (ex: runner's high). Others don't. This has a significant impact on enjoyment of and therefore participation in exercise.

I am not. And this question was quite serious. I've long struggled with keeping up exercise routines because I find it hard to keep motivated due to the lack of noticeable rewards, even ones so minor as "a feeling of accomplishment" after finishing.

Try testosterone

You’ll blow past expectations early

Apologies for being presumptuous.

You have two options. Option 1 is the Jock Wilink "bleak discipline" route. You do your workouts, without exception, every time you plan them. It will not get easier. You just develop discipline. If you miss a workout, it kind of doesn't matter, you immediately get back to the discipline. It's much a more of a mental shift than anything else, and pain and discomfort are kind of the point. Will this work? Sure, in tautological sense.

Option 2 is to find a way to enjoying the workouts in and of themselves. You aren't seeking the reward function of completing them, you are enjoying the process of doing them. This makes you outcome independent. Gym time is equal to fun time. This is what works for me. I did this by combining the "bleak discipline" approach with awareness of the exercises I intrinsically enjoyed at the gym. For whatever reason, I like doing deadlifts the same way that I like the color blue -- I just do, it's "built in." So, I dead deadlifts a lot. And, at first, I didn't do a lot of bench press. But, slowly, I was able to replace my total "bleak discipline" motivation with a mix of "hey! deadlifts are fun!" on the one hand with "okay, fine, I'll bench" on the other. Repeat this cycle a few times and, now, bench is a core part of my routine and I don't find it hard to motivate myself to do it (still like deadlifts more).

I don't know if there's a formal definition for this mental pattern. You're creating new, adjacent in pathways; you put "fun" as close as possible to "have to do it" until the circuit jumps the two wires. Yes, I know that's not how the brain works on a neurological level, but this is actually the same principle as cognitive behavior therapy. You're creating new thinking-acting repetitions until they become habits.

Doing hard things is hard and they don't get easier, but you can become better at doing the hard thing.

There are also indirect positive feedback loops to employ. I enjoy lists and handwritten stuff - so I mark off "workout complete" on a physical sheet of paper sometimes when I feel I'm dragging. Does that "help" in any objective way? Fuck no, but we don't care about the objective here, we're literally trying to alter the subjective experience. So, a wastepaper basket full of "go me!" stickynotes may be the best way to a new squat PR.

Try engaging in exercise that results in a reward at the end. I like walking for 2.5 miles (4 km; 5 miles (8 km) for the round trip) to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts or Chinese restaurant. There's also the pleasure of seeing all the different buildings.

It'll make you horny af. That's about it dawg.

Regarding sperm:

A 1999 study.

Short-term abstinence may be associated with limited improvements in semen quality in healthy men but could be more beneficial for infertile men, especially within the first 4 days of abstinence.

Regarding testosterone:

A 2001 study

These data demonstrate that acute abstinence does not change the neuroendocrine response to orgasm but does produce elevated levels of testosterone in males.

Also several bullshit studies. No credible peer-reviewed studies on cognitive or emotional benefits, beyond anecdotal.

YMMV, but oddly jacking off in the 21st century hasn't had much research.

Yes it does something. Namely, makes you a lot more interested in women from a dopamine/seeking perspective. Whether that's a benefit is up to you. It can be intoxicating though.

I wonder if, as abigguy4u implies, it has more to do with removing a poor coping mechanism in order to establish more constructive sources of joy and relief. Some people smoke cigarettes constantly to take the edge off. Does it work? Only if you keep at it, only temporarily, while doing nothing to the underlying pain and anxiety of their life.

One downside to a man simply not ejaculating is worse prostate health. A daily jizz may lower the risk of cancer there, last I heard.

It’s like quitting drinking. If you’re a terminal alcoholic, quitting will have some major positive effects on your life. If you drink a few beers twice a month, you’re probably not even going to notice. For “The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z” who are cranking it out to hentai 7 times a day, nofap is a revelation, and they will see substantial improvements to their mood and energy levels. For anyone with normal habits it probably isn’t going to be a game changer.

Increased horniness and its attendant behaviours. Past a certain point it will just end in a nocturnal emission.

In the words of Andrew Dice Clay: "What are you saving it for?! It'll grow back".

Others will have better things to say than me, but I think women like it when you're actually interested in them and eager to bed them. NoFap helps on that front. Any other benefits they claim, I would be pretty suspicious of.

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