Years before anybody had heard of the Whole30, Performance Menu cofounder Robb Wolf was, perhaps, one of the first nutrition experts to recommend a 30-day Paleo challenge, where skeptics and enthusiasts alike could see how they felt and performed after eating clean for a month, and perhaps slowly reintroduce potentially problematic foods to see how they reacted. These days, 30-day Paleo challenges are a dime a dozen, and many counterparts have popped up: 21-day sugar detoxes, 30-day gluten free challenges, and more of the same packaged under new names and branding with all sorts of books and ebooks and products for sale.

Even after the initial undertaking, where you figure out that yes, eating grains does play games with your mood (and weight), or that you’re one of the people who can handle milk after all, these challenges could keep popping up all around us. But will participating help you get on track, or will your attempts to buckle down lead to an unhealthy food rollercoaster? Let’s take a look at some pros and cons.

Pro: A challenge could help you deal with emotional issues.

If you find yourself relying binging on donuts, or whatever, in times of stress, taking 30 days off of that habit can help you come up with new coping mechanisms which you can tap into long after your 30 days are up. This is particularly true if you incorporate them into your routine even after the challenge is over, rather than embracing some kind of rollercoaster diet where you eat crap for a month and then make up for it for the following month (and repeat, ad nasueum).

Con: You might not kick that habit after 30 days.

It could take a lot longer for you to develop new healthy eating habits. And in some ways, going cold turkey for a limited amount of time is far more difficult than being ‘allowed’ to eat anything and trying to practice moderation. If you think you’re likely to binge on “forbidden” foods after your 30 days are over, it may be best to skip the challenge altogether and opt for incorporating healthier habits into your diet instead.

Pro: Meal plans take the stress out of planning.

If you decide to use the meal plan included in your ebook or print book or program you sign up for, you’ll get to try a variety of new recipes to keep you satiated. It’s hard to feel deprived when you’re enjoying so many flavors and a wide variety of meals, and can be nice to have everything laid out for you. Plus it’s a good excuse to test out recipes you may not have picked out for yourself, but may like so much that you end up incorporating them into your culinary repertoire.

Con: Meal plans are expensive.

If you’re used to eating eggs for breakfast every day and some kind of salad with protein for lunch, and suddenly drop everything to follow a 30-day meal plan designed by a bona fide chef, you’re going spend a lot of money on groceries, a lot of extra time cooking, and have a heck of a lot more dishes. It often takes a bit of trial and error to figure out how to make enough recipes that you’re not bored or feeling deprived with your food choices, but aren’t finding the process extraordinarily time-consuming and prohibitively expensive.

Pro: You might get healthier.

When used to hit the reset switch on a bad diet, detoxes can certainly lead to some amount of weight loss and improved performance, especially after the first week or so when your body adjusts to burning fat rather than carbs.

Con: You can totally do this wrong and be less healthy.

If you find yourself reaching for foods you don’t really like as a substitute for the foods you’d rather be eating, then your 30-day reset could actually lead to fat gain. That’s not even mentioning people using their challenge as an excuse to eat crappy food for the week before the detox begins and the week after it ends. And if you decide to take the month off of working out since you’re eating so well, then you could have performance losses rather than gains.

Pro: You pay closer attention to ingredients.

Packaged food contains the darnedest things. Sugar and grains can sneak in where you’d least expect them. Even if you’re aware of this, it can be a nice reminder to pay closer attention to exactly what you’re putting in your mouth, perhaps mindlessly, or to double-check ingredients before adding whatever you sampled at Trader Joe’s into your shopping cart.

Con: You might find yourself obsessing over minute amounts of ingredients.

That grain-free beef jerky you love may very well have a teensy amount of sugar. It probably won’t kill you. Unless you’re doing your very first 30-day experiment, have some kind of disease or autoimmune condition, are trying to compete at a certain weight class, or are a fitness model or something, it’s likely healthier not to worry about it.

By assessing your own temperament and taking the various benefits and drawbacks into account, you’ll be able to make your own determination as to whether buckling down for Paleo challenges (or their sugar-free brethren) will help you stay focused and reset your eating habits, or make it more difficult for you to maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle as a baseline.