Mindy shares how Overeaters Anonymous transformed her life through surrendering to her Higher Power, working the Twelve Steps, and embracing a supportive community, leading to profound physical, emotional, and spiritual growth.
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.
At an OA retreat, Heather responded to the question “How do you carry the message in meetings, as sponsors, with fellows, and in your everyday life?” We are happy to publish her response in Lifeline.
Here is a simple question that has helped me numerous times: how important is it? Asking myself this helps me reframe how I think about problems and situations and spurs me to ask myself these follow-up questions: Is it worth my sanity and my abstinence to keep obsessing over a problem? The answer is always “No, it is not.” Without spiritual, emotional, and physical recovery, I cannot maintain contact with my HP, who helps me … Continued
I heard the Second Step and had a spiritual experience that I’ve never forgotten,” says N.P., who went on to lose 75 pounds (34 kg) after joining OA. “Nothing could keep me from coming back.”
After four and a half years in OA, Rachel had experienced both solid abstinence and a period when life’s challenges had her surviving but not thriving. “What really propelled me through,” she says of this challenging time in her life, “was working another set of Steps.”
What is the difference between surrender, compliance, and acting as if? Give it some thought—maybe write about it—and then see what OA member and sponsor Jessica has to share and where her answer came from.
“There are many different ways to share experience, strength, and hope within the Fellowship,” says this duo of OA members. They formed an intentional partnership, “Partners in Recovery,” and work their program in tandem using literature, the telephone, slogans, and more.
After one year of abstinence, Elena is challenged by thoughts, emotions, and feelings that can no longer be numbed with food, and this is her opportunity to practice surrendering so many things to a higher power. “But I never found these more difficult than going the experience of letting go of busyness and being faced with boredom,” she says.
Tina, recovering compulsive overeater, and Ronnie, a compulsive overeater, host this workshop on OA’s First Step: “We admitted we were powerless over food; that our lives had become unmanageable.”