Mighty good question, Hopes@live. Especially considering how hard it is to avoid attractive women/girls if you live in a populated area...
I don't think there will be a single simple answer to this.
One side of the coin is obivously triggering your brain and addiction and exposing yourself to urges. Some suggest complete celibacy of bothe body and mind.
http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index.php?topic=14525.0
The other side is (as far as I understand about how our brains work) that you need not only to reboot but to actually rewire your brain. To replace, or retrain your brain, to seek satisfaction from real women/girls rather than P.
Much like Chewbacka wrote.
Chewbacka said:
On a side note, from what I have read I don't think that looking at real women could have a bad impact on your brain since what you actually want is to get horny with real women rather than images. If you don't run a porn movie in your mind it should be ok I guess.
http://www.yourbrainonporn.com/rewire-your-brain-using-ocd-neuroscience
We're men, we're hardwired to be attracted to women. It'd probably be quite futile to fight that naural urge. I actually think the noA approach could make it worse (forbidden fruit and all that).
Then again, exposing yourself to unnecessary urges and still feeding your addiction through TV, Facebook, Magazines and so forth... well that's just stupid
Again, there's probably not going to be a single simple answer.
My suggestion would be, be smart and get to know yourself. It's probably more a matter of what's going on inside your own brain and your personal reboot progression than a standard procedure to follow.
I take it from your counter that your about five days into your reboot.
Here's what happened to me:
- First two weeks: massive interest in checking out girls.
- Next roughly 10 weeks (during withdrawal). no intrest what so ever - both physical and mental flatline.
- Last couple of weeks: rappidly declining PMO-urges and much increased interest in real-life women
During the first couple of weeks I was tempted to do things I'd normally wouldn't do just to get the chanse to check out girls, like going to the beach. I realized that to be PMO talking and resisted the urges. Today I make no effort to check them out, but if the opportunity presents itself I'd even try and chat her up.
To summarize:
Better safe than sorry. Go NoA as much as possible. But don't over do it. Not thinking about sex, P, girls is still thinking about sex, P, girls. (The Simpsons describe the path of NoFap really well, S4E16 - Duffless. "Don't think about beer, don't think about beer, don't think about beer"
)
As a rule of thumb I'd say (based on my own experiense) pre-withdrawal looking = bad, that's PMO urges. post-withdrawal = good, that's rewiring - if it is rewiering and not feeding urges.
Somewhere, somehow, I think you, and everyone else know what's right for them depending on where they are in their journey. You've just gotta listen to your brain, or ignore it, depending on which phase your in on your journey
Simply asking the question suggest to me that you know it's not right for you at this point. Am I right?
So, a long, confusing reply, only to give an even more confusing answer (sorry about that, I really wanted to keep this short
): Don't look at girls, but do not either make any effort not to look at them. Do you know what I mean? If she's in your line of sight, look, and then forget about seeing her.
AND ABSOLUTELY NO TESTING OF TOOL, EDGING OR OTHERWISE PUTING YOUR HANDS BELOW YOUR BELT AND ABOVE YOUR KNEES! EVER!
Always, during the first 90 days:
BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY
Hope this was atleast somewhat helpful.
/ QWERTY