Martine from Texas USA used to binge eat on the way home from work, stopping at multiple fast food drive-thrus. “But tonight . . .,” she says, ”I thanked my Higher Power . . . and the OA program for giving me the freedom . . . to look back on my day of healthy and abstinent eating.”
Sepidah, an OA member from Iran, came into the program feeling physically, mentally, and spiritually bankrupt. “I could barely bear the weight of my soul,” she says. Through OA and working the Twelve Steps, however, she has found a workable solution. “I am calm,” she says. “I sleep more peacefully . . . and I have better balance in working the Steps.”
OA member A.K. from Wyoming USA was consumed by the demons of her addiction to food. “I withdrew from my friends and family, too embarrassed to face them in my current state,” she says. When she followed her therapist’s suggestion to try OA, she experienced, “a profound emotional and spiritual shift” in addition to “shedding physical weight.”
When our job is stressful (or even when it isn’t), an announcement of snacks in the break room can create a moment of weakness. When it happened to Linda, she reached for two Tools, literature and the telephone, to keep her abstinence.
“After several years of my sugar-free food plan, everyone started getting on my last nerve,” says Judith. But TWICE when she hopped into her car and set off to get a trigger food, Higher Power had a different plan.
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
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.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of working OA’s Twelve Steps, Steven recounts his discovery of how meditation in Step Eleven helped him untangle his emotional wounds and his compulsive overeating.
“No matter what walks of life the members come from, each is entitled to experience the fellowship our program offers,” says Anonymous, who showed up to their first OA meeting only wanting to be thin and for the emotional pain to stop and found themselves “loved and accepted as I was.”
ane. That’s the word Charles uses to describe his relationship with food before OA. He went to his first OA meeting only to support a friend, but he did not recognize his own problem. Years later, when he could no longer control his weight, a growing sense of hopelessness made Charles ready to hear OA’s message.