Tools & Concepts The Step Ten Connection Action plans are boring aren’t they? They’re just another way of procrastinating. The best thing is to just get on with it! I’d heard statements like these from many people in OA meetings, but I wasn’t really sure what I thought, because I wasn’t actually doing an action plan. The OA Tools of Recovery were well known to me, and … Read More
Tools & Concepts My Plan Keeps Me Moving I normally start my day with my arthritis exercises before I get out of bed. But if I am just not feeling it, then I get out of bed, turn on my computer, pour a cup of coffee, and start my meditation and journaling. I have several daily readers from which I read, and then I do freewriting to tell … Read More
Abstinence A Change of Purpose When I came to OA, I heard “We are not a diet-and-calories club.” “Oh really?” I thought. “Of course it’s a diet-and-calories club. Who are they trying to fool?” I had spent years joining every dieting, calorie-counting, television-infomercial club out there. They all promised weight loss. We’re all here, I thought, because we want to lose weight. Lose weight, lose … Read More
Share It Share It: Powerful Shares, Joyful Reading, Pages and Prayers Powerful Shares I wanted to share how sad I am to hear about the discontinuation of Lifeline. It has literally been a lifeline to me. I am one of the ones who answered your 2018 subscription appeal, and I recently renewed my subscription and will cherish every last issue. Thank you for the articles about “The Joys of Retreats and … Read More
Recovery Working the Program Discipline for the Day With enormous gratitude, I celebrate nineteen years of OA recovery this month. However, it is not the number of days abstinent that defines me today. What matters most is taking actions to manifest outwardly the changes inside me. This does not simply come about by following a food plan. It is also not enough to say, “God, do your thing.” … Read More
Abstinence Clear and Free God has blessed me with more than twenty-five years of abstinence, and I am still grateful every day. The most important day for me to be abstinent is today. I was in OA seven years before I got abstinent, and I’ve been abstinent ever since, praise be to my HP. During those seven years, I experimented with abstinence and also … Read More
Service Tools & Concepts Service Put Me There Service above the group level was never in my plans, but as I write this, I am the treasurer for my region. Thanks to my region-level service, I am about 30 pounds (14 kg) lighter! After twelve years of recovery and maintaining a 40-pound (18-kg) weight loss, I thought my weight-loss days were over, and I was comfortable with that. … 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
Sponsoring Tools & Concepts Key to Accountability It took me thirty years to get a sponsor—really. That’s how hardheaded and faithless I am. But when I finally did surrender to having a sponsor, it made all the difference. I finally was accountable; but more than that, I had a guide, a friend, and a sounding board. My recovery grew exponentially, so much so that I even took … Read More
