Steps Step 3: Power Surge At my home meeting, a member shared a story about wanting a specific food and not being able to stop herself from going to buy it. While she was putting on her coat, she said a prayer. “God, if you want me to not eat this, you’re going to have to help me.” When she arrived at the shop, there … Read More
Abstinence Being Nourished This is my twenty-ninth year in OA and my twenty-sixth year in recovery, which for me means back-to-back abstinence and maintenance of a healthy body weight. When I walked in the doors of OA in 1986 at the age of 30, the compulsion to binge was strong. I knew if I could eat well consistently, I would not have to … Read More
Newcomers Fortune Telling Who would have thought, when I entered my first OA meeting six months ago, that my life was going to change in every conceivable way? After almost forty years of yo-yo diets and spending most of my adult life on diet pills, I was about to discover my weight problem had nothing to do with willpower. What an eye-opener that … Read More
Slipping & Sliding Four Decades On January 19, 2016, I will enjoy forty years of recovery in Overeaters Anonymous. On that day, the fifty-sixth anniversary of the founding of OA, I will wish I could say I have forty years of abstinence. But I have had plenty of ups and downs, sometimes enjoying years of abstinence, sometimes struggling to maintain a few days. On that … Read More