A Perspective on Balance (Big Book 490)

…when we focused on abstinence as the measure of recovery, we found ourselves sidelined by small errors in judgment as we discovered what we needed to do to get and stay free of ill thinking and behavior. This was not helpful at all. Having a negative goal (abstinence), in which people seemed fixated on not bingeing, not purging, and not restricting just felt wrong. An “abstinence is recovery” mindset can be rigid and uncompromising. We decided that any definition of recovery that depended on specific ideas about food, weight, and body image meant defining the solution in terms of the symptoms of the problem. This made no sense to us: focusing on what we didn’t want drew our attention away from what we did want. And when we considered alternatives to abstinence as the hallmark of recovery, the idea of “balance” just felt right.