If you make one change to your diet, let it be cutting out sugar. Although it is not classified as a dangerous narcotic, sugar has many of the characteristics of a drug: it alters the consumer’s mood, has long-term detrimental effects on health, and creates a sort of dependence that leaves us wanting another “dose,” Gary Taubes writes for the Guardian. “Historians have often considered the sugar-as-a-drug metaphor to be an apt one. “‘That sugars, particularly highly refined sucrose, produce peculiar physiological effects is well known,’ wrote Sidney Mintz … But these effects are neither as visible nor as long-lasting as those of alcohol or caffeinated drinks, ‘the first of which can trigger rapid changes in respiration heartbeat, skin colour and so on’.”

Giving up sugar for just one month a year can help calibrate your baseline intake and force you to adopt healthier habits that can become more permanent, says the New York Times’ David Leonhardt. “The unpleasant parts of a month without sugar are temporary, and they’re tolerable. Some of the benefits continue long after the month is over.”