This article deals with the link between eating habits and the prescriptive discourse on nutrition. The notion of balance serves as the pivotal point for all the opposition between pleasure and control. The conclusions drawn in this article stem from a series of dialogues with persons who do physical training on a regular basis. For them, balance comes from eating habits, but especially from the measured application of both pleasure and control. According to the author, the social link is the cornerstone of this balance and analyzing it leads her to propose that a strong inclination toward control seems to disturb relational functioning thus exposing the eater to isolation and stigmatization. It is in this sphere where the borders emerge between the normal and the pathological.