“I work with therapists, dietitians, OA sponsors, and medical doctors to manage my mental illness, and I work on healthy eating and achieving a healthy body weight,” says Vicki. “Many food miracles miracles keep occuring, as I continue to work this program.”
“Gone are the binges followed by total despair for days,” writes Julian, who left OA after he felt he wasn’t making progress only to later realized just how much he needed our program.
This podcast features an Asian, Pacific, Islander, and Desi (APID) specific-focus workshop that was made open to visitors outside OA. The podcast highlights the experience, strength, and hope that APID members have to share within the OA Fellowship and to those outside OA who are still suffering from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors. 0:00–7:11Introductions … Continued
Jennifer’s childhood left her hungry for love, and that opened the door to an obsession with food. After thirty years of binge eating and diets another door opened: the door to recovery through OA. A year later, Jennifer can say, “I know I am worthy, and I want to nurture my authentic self and heal old wounds.”
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.
“It is because of OA that I can miraculously hold an addictive food in my hands and not have it speak to me.”
“It was only a few moments into my first meeting that I realized it was not about the weight, but the way I was leading my life,” says Marti, who reflects on her one-year anniversary of abstinence from compulsive overeating.
Mary Ann weighed 236 pounds (107 kg) and was facing a fatal liver condition. That was her wake up call. She came to OA, threw herself into the program, lost 106 pounds (48 kg), and has found spiritual, physical, and emotional recovery.
“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.
At age 11, Paul started binge eating to cope with feelings of loneliness and boredom and that compulsive eating behavior stayed with him through adulthood. After Paul found OA, his life changed completely, and he has learned to turn his powerlessness over to his Higher Power in exchange for the gift of abstinence.