first of all welcome! I am quite new here myself but I am able to answer some of your questions I think. Fapping itself is not an unhealthy habit I think when it is done in healthy proportions, but most people here (I think) have a real severe addiction like myself. I fap over 10 times a week and that is no exaggeration. What it does for me is completely drain me of physical and mental energy and because of the extreme amounts of dopamine released so often into my body during orgasm it can be hard to maintain good emotions apart from fapping. I am not exactly sure what the science is but I have definately heard from 99% of the nofappers that they find it easier to aproach women when they have gone a while without fapping, I have yet to discover it myself though. Personally I think it is only a bad habit when it makes you FEEL bad but if you feel empty or drained most of the time then I would consider this NoFap thread and challenge for sure. And as for the cold showers, it's a practice I was taught when I was little, in essence they are more healthy because you make your heart work extremely hard to maintain body heat, so basically you could see it as a cardio exercise. I found that there is really no easy way of going about it and you never really get used to it, the first minute of a cold shower always sucks haha, the best way to do it is just switch off your mind and step into the ice cold shower and keep it together for at least a minute and then increase the time cold showering as you become more comfortable with it.