Every night, Meg went out shopping for snacks. She’d come home, stuff herself, and then suffer from bad sleep caused by her compulsive eating. “I’d feel my ongoing failure as a human being,” she recalls. But after finding abstinence in OA, she now says “I feel light-hearted and excited about life. I’m blessed with so much more.”
A healthy check-in from Rosanne’s sponsee leads Rosanne to reflect on what it was like for her before she found OA. “I wanted to be thin but not give up the food. . . . OA encouraged me with more than just food issues—I no longer felt alone.”
“Coming into the program, I didn’t even realize how isolated I was,” says Jesse. “Soon I started to see a glow in others and in myself: The glow of recovery.”
Tina, a recovering compulsive overeater, and Gloria, a compulsive overeater and food addict, host this workshop on Step Nine: “Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” They give specific examples to show what making amends can look like in different situations.
Have you relapsed into compulsive eating or compulsive food behaviors? This video can help you understand how you got here. It will point you toward the next right thing you can do to get back to recovery.
Before OA, food ruled Dodie’s every waking moment, even from a very early age. In college, Dodie weighed 215 pounds (97.5 kg) and felt trapped in ugliness. When she realized she had a problem with food, she found OA, and now maintains a 85-pound (38.5-kg) weight loss.
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.
Kathleen’s binge eating and low self-esteem made her ill and unable to hold a job. She was in the midst of bingeing and counting calories when she heard on the radio a public service announcement about Overeaters Anonymous. When she attended her first meeting, someone told her “You’re not alone anymore,” and that was enough to give her hope and start her on her recovery journey.
Beth learned about OA after she noticed a coworker losing weight and becoming noticeably happier. When she realized that she was out of control, she asked if she could join her coworker at a meeting. At the meeting, she was relieved to hear that OA is not a diet program and that the other OA members had problems with food that were similar to her own.
Food was Bob’s sole obsession. He was selfish with food, and his unapologetic overeating even drove away friends. As an agnostic, he was uncomfortable hearing talk about God at his first meeting, but he stuck around, and now his life is changed completely and for the better.