After limited success with different types of dating, I've just gotten more and more direct over time. Finally, I got to the point of being completely direct on an online advert, I wrote something like, "If the theory is that you can find whatever you're looking for online, I'm looking for a friend to spend time with; kiss, touch, give physical affection to. Nothing skeevy, I'm normal and sane, oxytocin is good for you."

With my health experimenting, I've felt like I've gotten a pretty good handle on the oxytocin/prolactin side of things, so I moved on to focusing on what I thought was a separate topic, studying the mechanics of muscle-building, physique.

But, looking through the different anabolic hormones, the things that were said to slow their production, a familiar pattern's starting to come out:
~ Insulin ... 'release stimulated by the parasympathetic system, inhibited by the sympathetic system.'
~ Growth Hormone ... 'inhibitor: ... glucocortisoids', (cortisol).

I can't think of a way to phrase this that doesn't seem like an odd admission, but, I've been interested in the mating of primates lately and have been doing some reading. A few tidbits that I found interesting, then the real interesting bit.

- First, the eternal question, raised yet again: why does a gorilla pull away after sex?" (Also, why does a crowd laugh knowingly?)

A while back I did a photo series, showing a difference between when I first started the program and month later. It's been another five months or so, and I just took a new set of photos for a dating site; I was surprised at what I saw:

So, to update from the last post, it's been around the month mark since my last "Smorgasbord", and I'm in the thick of the "manly surge".

A tidbit I picked up recently. There's a famous experiment called the "Marshmallow Test", the basics of which are that you put a marshmallow in front of a child. The adult leaves the room and says that, if the child can hold off eating the marshmallow until the researcher comes back, the child can have two marshmallows.

I'd been hesitant to write this one, since negativity is a downer, and I do feel like I'm past the porn and orgasm craving and on board with the program overall. But, as the days are going by it has seemed like a pretty big deal, important to the overall process and valuable as a learning experience: about a week ago, I gave myself a few orgasms. Using porn, and not even the nicer kind, the fairly obscene stuff I used to watch.

I figured I'd give an update on how everything's been going since my last post. I seem to be getting a pretty good handle on how to manage things, and I haven't gotten the painful withdrawals since. I usually feel a bit off, more like the "normal" before I started this program, except that I still have the benefits of the abstinence underlying. For example, yesterday it snowed. I didn't internally feel strong like I had been feeling, but my body still flung the snow around easily and with the stamina I'd been noticing since abstaining.

A little background. Before doing this, my main interest was experimenting with health and diet. Somewhere along the line, whether it was from clean-eating, fasting, or a sensory-involved meditation I did an hour a day for five years, I eventually became hyper-attuned to my body. For example, I eventually created a diet based on how my body reacted to food. Good or bad, after I eat something, I'll get a tingle, ache, waves of energy, good or bad sensations in specific parts of my brain. Working at a diner, I'd become sick from the fumes from a blocked boiler before anyone could smell it.

Talking with outside people, there seems to be a common suspicion that long-term abstention from orgasms can cause problems with a man's sexual system, things like prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction, infertility, decreased sperm count, exploding prostates. Any long-term practitioners have personal anecdotes, any studies, counter-studies?