A dietitian explains how the care she delivered was improved once she understood that addictive processes can apply to problems with food. She says the addiction can be broken with the OA program and its Plan of Eating Tool.
A medical doctor asserts that compulsive eating is a disease that precedes other chronic disorders. The disease can be successfully treated by applying treatment principles similar to those used for alcoholism.
Desperate and exhausted after an all-night eating binge, Jessica wrote a letter to her food addiction, and spelled out every scary, uncomfortable, and honest thought. After two years in OA, she now sees how writing that letter made it possible to find recovery and a worthwhile life.
Terri explains what her religious friends and the strangers she has encountered don’t understand: that nothing can help her overcome her bingeing except her Higher Power, the Twelve Steps, and the Fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous.
“If I could control food the way it controls me, I wouldn’t need OA,” says one OA member. For years, she lived life “in the food” and in other addictions to cope with the echoes of childhood abuse, but now she is standing vulnerably in our loving program where she has found a path to healing.
Isa experienced food addiction and body image issues from early childhood. “I would have done anything to be thin,” she says. After topping 242 pounds (110 kg), she joined OA and knew right away she was in the right place.
Linda, grateful compulsive overeater, and Beverly, compulsive overeater, host this workshop on Step Eleven: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.” Examples of prayer and meditation are discussed.
This episode explores the nature of the disease of compulsive eating and the willingness it takes to begin the recovery journey. Some refer to the state of being just before accepting the OA program as “Step Zero.”
Bob was already in shape and at a healthy weight but learned in OA that his exercise habits masked a food addiction. He describes how OA gave him a safe place to find recovery and build a productive life.
Matt, a young person in OA, talks about his recovery journey and the impact that other OA members had on him as they carried the message to him through their example of taking themselves and the OA program seriously.