From the time I was a preteen struggling with weight and food, I thought I would always be on the outside of life, looking in at people living it. And then my Higher Power led me to the doors of Overeaters Anonymous. At my first meeting, I learned I wasn’t alone. But at my first convention, I felt it to …

As I planned to attend a regional convention, my hope was to grasp a nugget of information that would ignite and excite me to commit to the OA program and principles. I am new to OA and am still trying to find the group meeting that best suits my schedule and needs. I do not have a sponsor yet, so …

I am 62 years old and a recovering anorexic and bulimic. After suffering from this disease since the age of 15, I reached my final bottom on June 2, 2014, and walked into an OA meeting in Warwick, New York. No one at the meeting looked like me. I immediately said, “They are judging me,” when in fact, I was doing the judging. Then …

I came into OA twenty-nine years ago, weighing over 171 pounds (78 kg). I had stopped weighing three months before, but I was wearing a size 20–22. (Today I wear a size 6–8.) My world was very small, but as I got involved with service in the program, I heard that OA was worldwide. The World Service Conventions have been a great part …

I was working more than sixty hours a week when I returned to program after years of relapse. Most of the meetings I could attend were online, with just a sprinkling of telephone and face-to-face meetings. Online meetings saved my recovery many times, since I didn’t finish work until after the face-to-face meetings in my city were over for the night. …

I’ve come from being a screaming, hitting mother to a calm, effective grandmother. From a yo-yoing binger and dieter to an abstinent maintainer. From an insecure, scared victim to a confident leader and performer. From someone who didn’t know how to say no, to someone who says yes when the service will benefit me and others. From a doubter to …

Attraction is hard to pinpoint. I didn’t really know what kept me coming back to OA in those early days, over four years ago. I was attracted to the warmth of the OA rooms. Not the physical rooms—much of the time they were quite the opposite of attractive. Some of those ancient, cold, dark, damp, even moldy rooms might have …

My first OA meeting was during the summer of 2012, following more than forty years of dieting, starving, bingeing, purging, abusing laxatives, and compulsively exercising. After a lifetime of yo-yo dieting and periods of extreme anorexia, my weight had once again ballooned, rising to 220 pounds (100 kg). Since childhood, food and the number on the scale had been my …