What if nofap is a root of all my health problems?

I'm not a medical professional, and you probably should go talk to one, but in my opinion, you need to cut out the junk food, cut out the porn, and cut out the video games. I'm a firm believer in that you treat your body right, (eat well, workout, get 7-8 hours of sleep, etc) you will be rewarded by feeling better, looking better, and having a better attitude.

 

Not all of these symptoms are directly related to porn use, but brain fog and lack of emotional resilience is strongly correlated.

Some of your symptoms are diet related. The easiest thing you can do is set up a meal plan for just ONE meal a day that includes protein and vegetables. Don’t try to revolutionize your entire diet all at once, it’s going to overwhelm you. Just one healthy meal for an entire week, and document the results. I guarantee your fatigue will improve. Probably won’t fully resolve, but it might if you fully back off of refined sugars, starches, and low value carbohydrates. Drink water. Some people swear by a gallon a day, I’ll bet you’d feel better even on half a gallon. At the same time, please be careful about trying to do too much and expect too much, too early. You have a terrible lifestyle right now and it’s destroying you, but you will not be able to change everything all at once. Neither your body nor your brain is designed to reinvent itself on a whim.

A significant portion of your problems are a psychological dependence on pornography. It is such a huge part of your life, it is your primary supply for dopamine, for comfort, and who knows what else. You describe an elevated dependence on porn. You don’t mention concern over escalation, even claiming you’ve cut back, but 1-3 hours a day over several years is a lot. You’re not going to be able to quit right away. You have to try, because your situation can not improve while you are dependent on porn, but you can expect a lot of mistakes as you learn how to navigate life without it. You are going to need to learn how to replace the time you used to spend on it, replace the dopamine you lost, and learn what triggers you most so you can avoid those triggers or deal with them more appropriately. You will need to learn how to establish your sense of self without porn. From how you describe it, you use it to distract yourself from the ugliness and the outrageousness of daily life. Without that distraction, you will be confronted with those outrages constantly, and you’re going to have to learn how to assess and resolve them rather than turn your eyes away and pretend they don’t exist. That is going to take a lot of time and work. It’s going to be a lot of trial, and many, many errors. There will be frustrating times that will look like regression.

I know none of this sounds exciting or motivating. I am sorry there is no magic wand or pill or six easy steps, but I will not lie about this because too many people lie about costs and rewards, and it creates unrealistic expectations. Unrealistic expectations create disillusionment, and that creates failure. You need to know exactly how tough this dragon is before you fight it. However, if you do not fight it, it will eat you. You will remain psychologically zombified. If you do not fight this, you can only expect to remain uncomfortably numb, and that only while you are using.

Again, your food intake is the easiest step. Do that first. And while you’re doing that, try to build a streak of not using and see what happens. A better method that requires a little more attention is to record percentages of clean days v. using days, or number of times you’ve looked at porn, for how long, and if you progressed to M and O. There’s no tool for that, but it defeats a psychological trick your addiction plays by telling you you’ve already broken your streak so you might as well binge.

Once again, start slow. It is too easy to get a fire under your butt for a few days to a few hours, but get disappointed and start believing it’s too hard and slip into despair. If you try to run a marathon, or bench 300 lbs without training, you can’t succeed. What you can do is run a mile, or bench 50 lbs, and that’s more than you did before. Then build on that success. It’s the same way for psychological resilience, and lifestyle changes. Start small and build on success.

I hope, for your sake, that you stick with this and pull yourself out of the hole. Guys around here can offer you a hand, and describe how we did it, and commiserate about the misery you’re enduring, but we can’t do it for you. That struggle is yours, and if you persevere, that victory will also be yours.

 

It sounds like you are very well informed, I like that you said in the subject title -a- root of your health problems. The thing is there is always a combination of conditions, even if we say PMO there was the predisposition to get into PMO in the first place given how we grew up and so forth.

I think the question of what to do about it is a bit different than the root cause. Obviously that's important, but once we have the disease condition it may require more than cutting out the PMO and a lot of lifestyle adjustments.

I don't think being mentally or emotionally weak is an accurate way to frame the situation. Anyone dealing with any kind of addiction no doubt has a lot of 'backed up' emotional stuff, I think it is more likely that it is more like unprocessed crap. Some people may more successfully compartmentalize their feelings but that isn't about being 'stronger' because in reality they probably haven't really worked on themselves at all, which seems more common in our society. Even on a physical level just because someone is physically strong it doesn't mean they don't have physiological dysfunction in their body, the same might be said of people who can deal with life stresses but underneath they may have some psychological issues. From that perspective just being aware of everything you wrote in the OP puts you ahead of someone that's pretty much in denial.

 

Hey look on the bright side, you realized that porn has done this and now you have motivation to stop. The shit is evil man. It corrupts you and takes you over. You have to be strong and put your foot down and say no more. It's hard but as long as we keep on the battle and don't stay down, and always get back up, we have a chance. Everyone here has their motives to quit since porn has all affected them all in a negative way, that they no longer want to deal with. I relate to your symptoms in the very beginning when I came on here. I felt like death and then through spirals of sobriety I changed and you can too. Always come here for help on anything! We all are fighting the good fight together. Porn is the poison. Don't forget that. It's ruining your dopamine system, which is why you don't feel motivated. Trust me. It's stealing all your life force and weakening you. You have to get angry at porn. It's evil.

 

I have experienced many of the symptoms you experienced when you reduced your PMO to one hour per day. I can't offer much advice, because my circumstances and age are different, and I haven't been very successful for myself yet.

Mostly I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone in having those problems.

 

Visit a doctor for overall body checkup just to be sure but in general i believe all this is related to PMO because i am suffuering from all of the above mentioned issues and even many other issues way worse than these. You can read my thread where i listed them down and i am sure all these issues are result of 18 years of PMO. I am trying hard but havent been able to get a long streak but i am not goving up. I cannot live as a pmo addict for the rest of my life.
My advice would be to get rid of everything step by step. 1st week no PMO, if successful then from second week no PMO, less junk food. Third week no PMO, no junk food, less gaming and so on. Do not take extreme steps from day1 or you will relapse hard. Fill in your day with such activities which would take up your time. Join a random karate class where you have to attend and stand in front of an instructor. That would motiviate you as you would be forced to attend unless you will get emails from them for your absence. Do not join gym just to waste money unless a friend of yours is willing to drag you with him daily