After about two weeks, I truly began to lose my desire for binge foods, and abstinence became just another part of my life. I have been abstinent now for over eight years. When I walked into my first Overeaters Anonymous meeting, I thought I had worked Step One. After all, if I didn’t know I … Continued
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.”
“I was a fat kid, a fat adolescent, and . . . weighing 315 pounds (143 kg), I was a fat adult,” says Stuart, an OA member from Louisiana USA. Stuart suffered relapses and weight gains “but I never quit coming back,” he says. “In concert with my Higher Power, I have achieved a normal body weight of 139–144 pounds (63–65 kg) for the very first time in my adult life. . . . I am eternally grateful.“
“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that OA has completely saved my life,” says Renee D. from California USA. “I can’t wait to see what the next 900 days has in store for me.”
“Connection with another person on any level is what I love most,” says Elizabeth from Missouri USA. But even after losing 120 pounds (54 kg) her defects of character kept her emotionally isolated. See how she found success working the OA program.
”I’d tried millions of times to have a sane and healthy relationship with food and failed miserably each time,” says Trish. After nine months in the OA program, she can now say, “I love my life.”
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.
Taking an anniversary cruise while carrying 300 pounds (136 kg) of body weight left Elizabeth feeling despondent and suicidal. When she joined OA, her weight loss journey began. But her greatest progress so far has been working the Steps to covering and recover from the dysfunctions that have been driving her compulsive overeating.
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, a compulsive eater, and Karen, abstinent compulsive eater and food addict, host this workshop on Step Ten: “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.”