How OA Changed My Life Recovery Lost Half, Gained Everything I am at a peculiar milestone. I now weigh 168 pounds (76 kg), and that reflects my 168-pound weight loss. It’s also been three years since I started my transformation. I joined OA in January 2013. The following September, I was sitting in my chair and purposefully eating myself to death. I felt done with life; I could no longer … Read More
Steps Traditions Stepping Up to Recovery I cannot believe I have been abstinent long enough to have made it to Step Twelve. When I first came to this program, I would not have thought my life would be as it is now. It is very different. I am more open to life and active in it. The spiritual awakening I have experienced involves knowing I am … Read More
Abstinence Grace-Full Breakup I never thought I could or would even be willing to have an abstinent holiday season, but by the grace of God and what I’ve learned in this Fellowship over the past year, I did. Not that I didn’t gaze lovingly at some of my binge foods, but at each moment I had a choice to make: the choice between … Read More
Higher Power Actions That Help I came into program pretty mad at an HP who seemed not to care about me and let all the bad things happen both to me and in the world. When I started working Step Two, my Step work started demonstrating to me how limited my belief was. I began to explore and experience something greater than my limited imagination. … Read More
Relapse Relapse & Recovery One Small Change When I first came to OA in 1985, I was blessed to walk into a meeting full of recovery, love, fellowship, and fun. Abstinent sponsors were available, and a group of about eight of us ate lunch together afterwards, did things together, and gave service beyond the group level. (Our specialty was entertainment for OA events.) We had parties at … Read More
Fellowship Make My Needs My Wants I’ve been in OA since September 1983. I helped start a local retreat in the 1990s, which I’ve attended now for many years. In 1998, I heard someone at the retreat say that they could be abstinent 100 percent of the time, and somehow that really hit home. That same year, the retreat leader emphasized looking at my part in … Read More
Abstinence Blessings and Opportunities I have been maintaining my abstinence through illness, one day at a time, for the past eighteen months, and I am so grateful to other abstinent fellows who had shared with me, prior to my diagnosis, that they faced chronic health conditions. I thought it was a miracle they were abstinent despite their ill health. Then I was diagnosed with … Read More
Sponsoring Tools & Concepts Thank-You Notes My sponsor had me start sponsoring at thirty-days abstinent. I was working Step Three by that point, so I could help newcomers getting started on Step One. My sponsor gave me ten minutes every morning for my first three years of abstinence. Now, I carry on that pattern, offering a daily ten-minute slot to someone newly abstinent and starting on Step … Read More
Sponsoring Tools & Concepts Healing Connections Sponsoring is working one-on-one with another compulsive eater to uncover and release whatever separates us from a loving Higher Power of our understanding. We use and share about OA Tools and slogans, study and apply the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of OA in our lives, and reach out to each other on a daily basis to share our learning … Read More
Sponsoring Tools & Concepts A Grateful Goodbye My first sponsor, M., passed away last month. He was one of the first people I met in OA, but it was a year before he became my sponsor. He was one of the few men I’d met and one of very few OA members who identified as a sponsor. I wrote down his number, but at the time, he … Read More