No Nut November, or the NNN challenge, is an internet challenge in which participants try not to masturbate or ejaculate for the month of November; many also avoid porn. “Nut” is slang for ejaculation. It is a social-media trend with informal rules, not a health programme, a treatment, or a test of character.
You have probably seen it on Reddit or in a video and wondered whether to join, or what a month without would actually do for you. This page answers that from the research, not from the memes.
This site takes its name from the challenge, but it is not a competition, a streak leaderboard, or a claim about the benefits of semen retention.
Evidence strength: early for the effects of a month of abstinence; one online survey of the challenge itself, one seven-day trial, qualitative forum studies, and one small hormone study.
What does No Nut November mean?
The researchers who studied the trend define it as a mainstream internet challenge in which participants attempt to avoid masturbation, or ejaculation as a result of masturbation, for the month of November. Garas, Levang and Pukall. The name is literal: no ejaculation in November. It is sometimes searched as “know nut November”, but the “no” is the point.
Who started No Nut November?
No one owns it: the challenge has no founder, organiser or official website. The phrase appeared online in 2011 and spread among men on social media from around 2017; a dedicated Reddit community grew from roughly 16,500 members in 2018 to 52,000 a year later. It is associated with the NoFap community, which encourages abstinence from porn and masturbation more generally. Wikipedia has the timeline.
Can girls do No Nut November?
Yes. The framing and the jokes are aimed at men, but there is no gatekeeper. The 2025 study describes its 435 participants and non-participants as a diverse sample, and the questions on this page apply to anyone who watches porn and wonders what a break would show them.
What are the No Nut November (NNN) rules?
There is no official rulebook. The commonly described version is abstinence from masturbation, and for many participants from sexual activity altogether, for the whole month. Wikipedia summarises the common form. Groups differ on whether partnered sex counts and on whether porn is included, even though porn is the reason a lot of people join.
Because the rules are informal, the version you follow is yours to define. The most useful decision is whether you are testing masturbation, porn, or both. They are different behaviours with different roles in your life, and a month without one does not automatically tell you anything about the other.
What counts as failing No Nut November?
Under the common version, ejaculating by choice counts as failing: masturbating to orgasm and, in the strict version, sex with a partner. A wet dream does not count, because it happens in your sleep and is not something you choose. Edging and watching porn without finishing are where versions split, so decide before the month starts.
- Masturbating to orgasm: fails every version of the challenge.
- Sex with a partner: fails the strict version, in which the month means sexual abstinence; looser versions only rule out masturbation.
- A wet dream: not a failure. It is an involuntary and normal release.
- Edging: depends on whether your rule is no masturbation or no ejaculation. Can you edge during NNN? goes through both.
- Watching porn without finishing: does not break a rule about ejaculation, but if porn is the reason you joined, it is the habit you set out to test.
Why do people do No Nut November?
For some it is a joke with friends. For others it is a serious attempt to change something.
Researchers who analysed 104 abstinence journals written by men on a “rebooting” forum found that members mostly started because they believed they were addicted to porn, or blamed it for negative consequences, especially sexual difficulties. These were self-selected writers describing their own perceived problems. Fernandez, Kuss and Griffiths.
Motivation also tracks beliefs. In an online survey of 1,063 people recruited through Reddit, the wish to abstain from masturbation was associated with seeing masturbation as unhealthy, with conservatism and religiosity, with lower trust in science, and with self-rated hypersexuality. It was not associated with behavioural markers such as the maximum number of orgasms in a day. Zimmer and Imhoff. Wanting to abstain, in other words, says as much about what a person believes as about what they do.
Does No Nut November have benefits?
In the only published study of the challenge, people who had taken part in No Nut November scored higher on sexual flexibility than people who never had. That is a difference between groups at the start, not an effect of the month. Over the month itself, in this sample, measures of sexual pleasure, solitary desire, sexual function, and sexual excitation did not differ between participants and non-participants. The study was an online survey with self-selected respondents, and only 114 of the 435 completed the second questionnaire. Garas, Levang and Pukall.
Nothing about energy, focus, confidence, or attractiveness has been shown to follow from a month of abstinence. For what people report after quitting porn over longer stretches, and which claims hold up, see the benefits of quitting porn.
What we know: in one small survey, a month of abstinence was not associated with better or worse sexual wellbeing; the best-known physiological claim behind the challenge rests on a retracted study.
What we do not know: what happens over longer periods, what happens in clinical samples, how women and non-binary participants fare, and whether anything changes that a questionnaire cannot measure.
Does No Nut November raise testosterone?
There is no reliable evidence that it does in any way that matters. The often-quoted claim that testosterone peaks on day seven of abstinence comes from a 2003 study of 28 men that was retracted by the journal in 2021, and the other study usually cited measured just ten men before and after three weeks of sexual abstinence. Exton and colleagues. Does masturbation lower testosterone? goes through the full evidence; if low energy or low sex drive is why you ask, a blood test arranged by a doctor answers the question better than a month of abstinence can.
What happens after 30 days of not ejaculating?
No measured turning point has been found. The hormone studies above are the only physiological data usually cited, and neither followed men for a month. Some people notice wet dreams, which are a normal release, not a failure. What most people learn from 30 days is behavioural: when the urge arrives, what it is usually covering, and how the freed time gets used. That is also why the month works better as an observation window than as a countdown. For one reader, a month off porn was when his morning erections came back; that is his experience, not a promised result.
Can No Nut November help with a porn problem?
It can, as an experiment, if you treat it as one.
The journal writers above found abstinence very hard, because of habit and because so many everyday cues triggered the urge to watch. Those who kept going credited a mix of their own strategies and support from other people, and they attributed a range of benefits to abstinence. The authors say prospective studies are needed before abstinence can be called an intervention. Fernandez, Kuss and Griffiths.
Withdrawal is not a given either. A randomised seven-day trial of abstinence from porn, not from masturbation, found no overall group difference in craving, mood, or withdrawal-like symptoms. Fernandez and colleagues. What a month will show you is where and when the urge arrives. If you later decide to change your porn use properly, that is the material you will need.
If you are doing this because of a specific problem
Many people use November as the push to look at something that has been bothering them. A month off is not a treatment for any of these, and it cannot tell you what is causing them. Each of these pages starts with the causes worth checking first:
- If you can get hard alone but not with a partner, start with why erections can work alone but not with a partner.
- If you lose your erection partway through sex or just before penetration, start with why erections fade during sex.
- If you stay hard but cannot finish during sex, start with why finishing can be harder with a partner than alone.
- If you have no motivation to do anything and your evenings keep disappearing, start with low motivation and how your evenings end.
- If erections have become unreliable more generally, start with what the research says about porn and erection problems.
- If your sex drive has dropped and you are in your 20s, start with causes of low libido in young men.
Some of these problems have medical causes, such as circulation, hormones, medication side effects, or depression, that no challenge will reveal. See a doctor before November, not after it, if an erection or ejaculation problem is new, persistent, or happens alone as well as with a partner, if it comes with pain, or if you also have diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart problems. The same goes for low mood that has lasted most days for two weeks or more. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, contact emergency services or a crisis line now.
How to use November as a 30-day experiment
If you take part, treat the month as an observation window you chose, not a reboot with a recovery timeline. Nothing is known to reset on day 30. The point is to see what changes when porn, or masturbation, is no longer the default, and to come out of the month with information about your own pattern.
- Write a baseline. Before 1 November, note a few lines on your sleep, mood, energy, how your evenings usually end, and your sexual function, alone and with a partner if you have one. Without a before, the after is guesswork.
- Decide the rule. No porn, or no porn and no masturbation. Pick one and write it down. The first tests a habit; the second also tests how your body responds to a break, and the results mean different things. Tell one person if that makes it easier to keep going.
- Make porn harder to reach on your phone. If your sessions usually start on your phone, a content blocker or your phone’s built-in screen-time limits will not stop a determined search, but they add a pause, and a pause is often enough. Charging the phone outside the bedroom does the same at night. How to block porn on your phone has the steps for iPhone and Android.
- Plan for the difficult moments. You probably already know when they come: late at night, after a bad day, when you are alone and bored. Decide in advance what you will do instead. What to do when an urge hits has a short routine for the first few minutes.
- Review at the end. On 30 November, compare your notes with your baseline. Read your own record before you read anyone’s list of benefits, then decide whether to stop, continue, or change the rule.
You do not need a trend to begin. But if November is when you start paying attention, that is a fair place to start.
What if you break the streak?
Then you have a data point, not a verdict. Read what to do after you watched again before you decide what it means. Two readers describe exactly this: one spent an hour on a cam site on day 30, another relapsed on day 77, and both kept going.
Be careful about turning a game into a moral test. A meta-analysis, mostly of cross-sectional studies, found that feeling one’s porn use is a problem is strongly tied to moral disapproval of one’s own use, over and above how much a person watches. Grubbs and colleagues. If a lapse on 12 November leaves you feeling like a failure, that reaction tells you something about your beliefs, not only about your behaviour.
If, on the other hand, you found that you could not stop even when you wanted to, or that the pattern is costing you time, sleep, or closeness, that is worth taking seriously whatever the calendar says. Look at control and consequences, and consider talking to someone if repeated attempts are not changing anything.
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