The Same Solution

It is easy for me to lose sight of the gifts OA and abstinence have given me. I have been abstinent for three and a half years. I lost about 50 pounds (23 kg), and I have maintained a healthy body weight for two and a half years. Before OA, I hadn’t been a healthy body weight since childhood. By my teens, I had resigned myself to being fat, unattractive, and unlovable for the rest of my life. I was 26 when I attended my first OA meeting. I was “struck abstinent” and have remained abstinent from that day on.

My journey on the road of recovery has been rocky at times, and my Higher Power has shown me the true nature of my illness when I have been ready to accept and surrender. I’ve had several rock bottoms along the way, and a lot of pain. I have struggled with finding balance in my life. I have kept myself so busy with work, service, and other activities that I haven’t had time to reflect or practice self-care.

I experienced physical recovery very early, before I found significant spiritual and emotional recovery. As a result, the obsession was transferred, and I turned the scale and my plan of eating into my Higher Power; if some weight loss was good, more had to be better. Even in recovery, I made my universe very small. I’ve experienced loneliness, isolation, and depression, but without the anesthetic that excess food provides. The illness of compulsive eating is cunning, baffling, and powerful. If there is a chink in my armor, it will find its way in.

However, I have found there is a solution, and it is the same solution I found when I first entered the rooms of OA. The Twelve Steps have shown me that there is a way out from my self-imposed bondage; a way to live a life free from the misery of compulsive eating (in all its guises); and a way to live a full life, with joy, laughter, and love for myself and others.

What do I have to do? Accept my powerlessness and surrender. Surrender my old ideas about weight, body image, health, myself, and the world. When I spend more time cultivating a relation ship with my Higher Power (rather than running around on self-will and five hours of sleep), I find that amazing things come to pass. I am given the willingness to take the right action and work the Twelve Steps to the best of my ability. Food stays in its place.

Today, I am genuinely grateful to be alive and abstinent, even on the really tough days. I am given hope by the members who walk this road of recovery alongside me. I have faith and reliance on a Power greater than me. And I am given an opportunity to be of use, by sharing my experience with other compulsive eaters and giving back to the Fellowship that has given so much to me.

—Anonymous, London, England