“Well?! Are you?” asked a raspy, aggressive voice. Even though the woman stood about two feet shorter than me, I took a step back. I’d been walking the aisles of the grocery store and it took a few seconds to register what she wanted to know. My shirt had the word “fearless” in block letters across the chest. I hadn’t …

The recovery Tools I have learned in OA have recently enabled me to overcome one of my greatest fears. I had always been terrified of heights, so when I heard that my coworkers and I would participate in a ropes course as part of our staff training—climbing sixty feet up in the air and balancing on ropes and small pieces …

I thought I had the OA program down. I knew what I needed to do. I had a plan of eating, and I worked my program. Everything was going great—or so I thought. After years of being abstinent and following my food plan, things began to change. Inexplicably, I started gaining weight. After going to a doctor with complaints of …

Everything in my life was happy and lucky, except my weight. My disease manifested after I got married, when I was an RN working full-time. My husband would be asleep when I came home from work, and in the late, quiet hours, I could eat as many snacks as I wanted. Then I discovered I could put snacks in containers …

I have been in the rooms of OA for five years. I have been relieved of 91 pounds (41 kg). I have been in and out of relapse and have heard many stories of fellows who suffered terribly in this disease. I did not understand the phrase “we use food to stuff emotions we do not want to feel” until …

When I used to exercise compulsively, I had a saying I would use to keep hydrated: “When you think, drink.” Now that I am abstinent, I no longer exercise compulsively. But I use a similar method to make outreach calls. Whenever my intuition (also known as my HP’s will) tells me I should really make a call, I immediately grab …

The most profound change after OA is in the quality of my relationships. When I face a challenging situation with another person, recovery gives me a moment of pause to rein in my temper, take responsibility for my feelings, and then speak and act from a place of compassionate acceptance. I’m particularly grateful for the ability to be more calm …

Every year since I was 13 years old, my New Year’s resolution had been to lose weight. It wasn’t until 2014, when I was 23, that I altered that New Year’s resolution to instead heal my relationship with food. After hitting bottom, bingeing every night on a wide variety of foods, my fear of change was overpowered by the pain …

For half my life, I felt like some kind of awful, monstrous presence—peculiar, pessimistic, and pathetic. I had a dark secret that even I didn’t know about, and almost every action I took was viewed as negative. At home, I was a scapegoat, and at school, I was a crybaby; but wherever I was, I always felt like something from …

I had been out of bed for exactly eight minutes, and the disease was right in my face, a force that almost knocked me over. I was totally into resentment. “Woe is me. It takes so long to prepare my abstinent breakfast. I could be doing other things.” Then, quickly, powerfully, and closer, the voice of Higher Power. Today, it …