Overeaters Anonymous is a Fellowship of individuals who, through shared experience and mutual support, are recovering from compulsive overeating. We welcome everyone who wants to stop eating compulsively. There are no dues or fees for membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions, neither soliciting nor accepting outside donations. OA is not affiliated with any public or private organization, political movement, ideology or religious doctrine; we take no position on outside issues. Our primary purpose is to abstain from compulsive overeating and to carry this message of recovery to those who still suffer.

Editorial Policy: Opinions expressed herein are those of the writers and not of HMI or OA as a whole, unless otherwise noted. We reserve the right to edit all submissions with the intent of preserving the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous.

Rigorous honesty, or Tough Truth, reminds me of tough love. It may not be pleasant to practice, but it’s the right thing to do.

It has God in it, and is for my highest good. Using tough love and being rigorously honest both often deal with unpleasant situations. But I am repeatedly told that the truth shall set me free (even if, as the saying goes, it pisses me off first).

My need for logical, accurate, exact boundaries in my life include weighing and measuring my food at each meal, the discipline of putting the tools of the program to use each day, and studying and practicing the 12 Steps daily. Not to mention my constant contact with HP in my thoughts, actions and attitudes.

Some definitions of rigorous include: logically accurate; harsh; and severe. I know rigorous honesty can be too harsh and severe.

I guess it all depends on where you draw the boundaries between helpful and harmful, good and evil. Just like in tough love, I believe that rigorous honesty should have a large degree of love in it…after all, God represents both truth and love.

Proper boundaries in our lives represent caring guidance and lots of loving leadership. Years ago, the term "rigorous honesty" sounded very harsh to me, because I’d been so used to total indulgence. But finding and living in the goodness of honesty has to be an uncompromising lifestyle for me. If it’s not, then my disease will worm its way back into my thoughts and actions at every opportunity. I guess you could say that my disease has reached a critical level.

I’m so grateful today for the freedom from the obsession. As long as God is willing (and I know He is), and as long as I do the footwork in the program, I’ll continue to experience days of recovery.

10:00 AM, 2nd Saturday of the month at the Oasis Club, 5645 Hillcroft.

I used to wish that somebody would give me directions on how to care for myself – the same way a new sweater has instructions or a new VCR. My recovery in OA has helped me grow spiritually, mature emotionally and find balance physically. Here is a list of care instructions that I have written for myself. I don’t always follow them, but when I do I feel much better about myself and my life.
 

Please give me at least eight hours of sleep a day.

Please feed me three moderate, abstinent meals.

Please make sure I exercise at least three times a week.

Please bathe me daily and then apply lotion and powder to nurture my skin.

Please allow at least five minutes of quiet prayer and meditation time every morning.

Please tell me you love me – often and sincerely.

Please be gentle with me because I am still learning. I am continually learning.

Please make sure I go to at least three meetings a week.

Please make sure I speak with my sponsor honestly and openly about what’s going on in my life.

Please stop me when I get going too fast.

Please remind me that I am one of God’s miracles and I am here to serve him and my fellows – not myself!

Please make sure that I write in my journal in order to process and acknowledge my feelings.

Please have fun with friends – go out, laugh, be with others – several times a week.

Please remember that everything will be ok. Remind me throughout the day that God's in control. He has my back.

Please be rigorously honest with me, but not brutally critical.

Please set aside time for me to do something creative – draw, write, paint – each week.

Please dress me in comfortable and flattering clothing.

Please see to it that I smile.

Please give me the time and space to feel my feelings without turning to self-destructive activities.

Please show me how to be happy, joyous and free – one day at a time.

I can’t give you solutions to all of life’s problems, doubts, or fears. But I can listen to you, and together we will search for answers in the 12 Steps.

I can’t change your past with all its heartaches and pain, nor the future with its untold stories. But I can be there for you as you work each step when you need me to care.

I can’t keep you from a stumble into relapse. I can only offer my hand that you may grasp it and not fall.

Your joys, triumphs, successes, and happiness are not mine; yet I can share in your laughter.

Your decisions about food plans and abstinence are not mine to make, nor to judge; I can only support you, encourage you, and help you when you ask.

I can’t prevent you from falling away from OA, from friendship, from your values, from me. I can only pray for you, talk to you, and wait for you.

I can’t give you boundaries, which I have determined for you, but I can give you the room to change, room to grow, room to be yourself.

I can’t keep your heart from breaking and hurting, but I can cry with you and help you work the steps as you pick up the pieces and put them back in place.

I can’t tell you who you are. I can only love you and be your friend as together we "trudge the road of happy destiny."

• S.T., Frederick, Maryland USA

12^th Step Within: Reach out, touch someone!

"Use the phone!" This is a suggestion so many of us have heard from our sponsors, from speakers, from our OA friends and from those people who have what we want.

Why is this tool so valuable? What does a simple phone call accomplish?

At the Region III Assembly in Oklahoma City, these were the questions the 12^th Step Within Committee discussed. Twelfth Step Within means reaching out to the still-suffering member inside our fellowship.

When a member of our fellowship is still suffering, it is the responsibility of each of us to reach out to him or her. This could be a newcomer who is struggling with his/her abstinence, a long-timer who has stopped coming to meetings or a member who has lost his/her abstinence and is gaining weight.

It is often difficult to reach out to someone in program who’s not "getting it" than it is to offer the program to a person suffering outside the fellowship. Relapse is a tender subject, but wouldn’t it be better to offer that person a "lifeline" than to allow them to slip away and drown in the sea of compulsive eating.

"So how can I reach out?" Here we are back at the beginning: Use the phone! Here are some suggestions that the 12^th Step Within Committee would like to respectfully and lovingly offer:

• Call your sponsor every day; they often get as much out of it as you do;

• Practice "three-a-days" – make three OA calls a day to anyone (answering machines don’t count);

• Maintain a phone list – make a phone list for your meeting and hand it out at the meeting, or make a city-wide phone list for your city;

• Call someone you have never called before;

• Call someone you haven’t seen at a meeting in awhile;

• Call someone you know is struggling;

• Call everyone you can think of to tell them about an upcoming OA event (plus, OA events are a good place to find serious recovery); and

• Call a newcomer when he/she is no longer a newcomer.

The important point is that YOU can make a difference. Your call could be the end of someone’s relapse and the beginning of a new life free from compulsive eating.

As OA’s responsibility pledge states: "Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion, for this I am responsible."

• Submitted in OA love and unity Region III 12^th Step Within Committee Lora L., Houston, Secretary

In the OA "tools of Recovery" pamphlet, meetings are defined as "gatherings of two or more compulsive overeaters who come together to share their personal experience, and the strength and hope O"A has given them" (page 4). In its very broadest translation, I have a meeting Monday through Friday in my car. Since I have a one-hour drive to work every morning and home every evening, I listen to OA recovery tapes while I drive. I have a large collection that I have purchased or taped from retreats and conventions. I listen to one each day, and it’s like having my own speaker-meeting. I have had meetings with longtime recovering OAers from California, Texas, Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New York and Maryland, as well as from other countries. These fellow OAers travel with me to share their experience, strength, hope and recovery.

I used to do my worst bingeing in the car – two hours alone every day! When I came to OA, I was told that if I were to give up the food, I would have to put something healthy in its place. Someone offered to get me the "Twelve Steps of Recovery" on tape, which I listened to exclusively for months before finding other tapes. Thus began my tape "meetings." Of course, I still attend three weekly meetings where I share with other compulsive overeaters face-to-face. But along with prayer and meditation, tapes in the car save me from compulsive overeating daily.

Thanks to everyone who has shared at a retreat or a convention that has been taped. I couldn’t have done it without your courage, honesty and willingness. You’ll never know how much your sharing has helped. I hope to meet you all in person at a meeting one day. –A.S., Covington, Louisiana USA

Reprinted from Lifeline April 1999

Change is hard. There are a lot of changes going on – both in my life and in OA here in Houston. I think what change does is bring in fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of success.

A chapter in my life has closed with the graduation from high school of my son. My "mother" role has changed dramatically. I can still worry about him and my daughter, but they are adults now – not my babies. I fear the future because I don’t know how to not be a mother.

I turned fifty this year. The aging process is a major source of fear and anger. I don’t like wrinkles, sags, hot flashes, and bi-focals. But, these are here and inevitable. People I love are dying and moving on to whatever is beyond this life.

My job and my company are changing – the oil and gas industry is hell on this. These changes are scary. They make me angry. Yet, they are exciting.

OA here is Houston has changed over the last ten years. Most of those changes have been slow allowing me time to adjust to them. Recently the Oasis Club moved to a new location. It was hard to let go of the old location, but the new one is even better for me – closer. The board of the Oasis Club has done a great job on the new location making it comfortable and cozy. The people and the love in the room make it what it is – not the room or the building or the location.

The OA program of recovery has given me the Steps to deal with the changes in my life. I have Steps, tools, fellowship and a Higher Power that loves me. These things keep me abstinent during these trying times. These things give me the courage to face these changes and the willingness to accept these changes as exactly the way my life is supposed to be. Thank you, OA and HP. – Helen, Missouri City.