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.

After two years in program and a sixty-seven pound weight loss, I awoke one morning believing I was cured. This was the first insane thought before the first compulsive bite.

It took six years of overeating and suffering for me to make it back to OA, although I tried to several times. I’d go to meetings searching for a person or sponsor who would say the right thing and fix me. I thought someone else should be responsible for my recover – or blamed for the lack of it. I didn’t realize I had to be willing.

The geographic cure didn’t work. Neither did diets. Self-control was nonexistent. I was powerless over food and completely miserable. I continued to pray for an answer even though I thought HP had given up on me.

Three and a half months ago, I read a notice in the local newspaper. Someone was starting a new OA meeting in our small town. Little did I know that this person would become my sponsor and dear friend. I went to this meeting and came home abstinent!

I’m back home again with my OA family. I’ve learned a lot in the past six years, including the biggest lesson of all: I can’t live without OA. In the last three and a half months I’ve experienced God-given abstinence, recovery from my disease and an understanding of the program I didn’t get the first time around. And I’ve made many wonderful friends.

In our world of fast foods and quick fixes, my great hope was always an overnight change, a magic pill, an easier, softer way. I was too impatient to wait and too lazy to work long and hard to make it happen. This, I’m grateful to say, is what I used to be like. One thing is for sure – breaking old habits doesn’t come instantly.

Nothing takes longer or requires greater effort than practicing the principles of the program in all my affairs. Nor is there anything more satisfying than a life lived fully, free from compulsive overeating. Thanks, HP, I’m glad you waited for me!

- Texas USA – Reprinted from A New Beginning, Pg. 26

"Steps" Newsletter will need an editor for the year 2000.

Published quarterly (That’s only 4 times a year.)
 
 

From the other room, I remember hearing the sound of the refrigerator door close and feeling the compulsion to see what my husband was eating. I remember my husband saying, "Don’t I do anything right?" I remember throwing away a note I started because I had made a simple error. I remember staying up until midnight before vacation to make sure the house was completely in order before I left for three days, and remaking our bed after my husband had already made it.

Perfectionism is a troublesome character defect of mine. I don’t have many close friends because people are put off by my obsessive-compulsive personality. They think they could never be the "perfect" friend. And you know what, I have trouble keeping friends because I can’t overlook their faults. I find it difficult to be nonjudgmental. Thus, I feel lonely and isolated. I think people that know me would express surprise – "but you’re so friendly." Yes, but you know people don’t call to chat or invite me to come over. Perfectionism serves to keep me isolated from others – exactly the opposite of what I need to work my program successfully. Christine S. - Wharton

I remember a time when I was in a "retraining class" after my divorce. This particular class was to coach us on our interviewing skills when we applied for a job. One of the hypothetical questions was "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" In order to always put yourself in a positive light, we were told to say that our "weakness" was being a perfectionist. That wasn’t a stretch for me. Maybe to a prospective employer that isn’t such a weakness, but over time and being in OA I have learned how it hurts me. I still want to do my best, but I don’t want to kill myself doing it. I want to enjoy life today instead of torturing myself about what I should have done. Janet - Houston

Perfectionistic – high expectations for myself and others – as I’ve gotten older and with the help of OA, I am learning to take "one day at a time" a little more. It’s difficult to go against a genetic predisposition (or is it partially a learned behavior?) toward perfectionism. I grew up in an extremely perfectionistic environment; communicated to me at an early age that things I did were never quite good enough. I still feel this way at times, especially with my mother. This is not a good thing for a child to learn and be exposed to, as it makes for low self-esteem and insecurity – the hallmark of my life – both of which, I feel definitely contributed to my compulsive overeating at a very young age (before age 5).

In my OA walk, and in life in general, I feel God has put many things in my life to try and get me to look to him for guidance and to make me take one day (or one moment) at a time – for this I am grateful. I still battle the tendency toward sometimes-unrealistic expectations of others and myself although this has gotten better since in OA (and with age). Sometimes this perfectionism causes resentment in others and I resent it when others do this with me, so I try to be aware of it and through what I’ve learned in OA, I can deal with it.  Anonymous

Tradition Eight: "Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers."

In Step One, it says that I admit I am powerless over food and my life is unmanageable. When I came into the program I wanted to breeze past this step. I knew I was powerless over food, the scale and the mirror told me that – but my life was unmanageable? As I read The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous, Chapter 1, I came to see how my life was running me and not the other way around.

OA has taught me so much. I thought the program was just about food; how to be less obsessed with it, control the food – life would be better. I’ve discovered that food is only the tip of the iceberg. What lies under the waterline is a lifetime of learned behaviors, attitudes, preconceived notions that are making my life unmanageable on all levels. Food/overweight -they are the signs to the world of my inward compulsion to control all of my life. I have a fierce driving need to control everything around me from A to Z. I make myself miserable and I don’t know why I am miserable. I’m trying so hard to do it all right. Where does this need come from? Deep inside. Someplace dark and scary. Someplace I don’t want to go. I run from the reason but the compulsion is still there.

Fear walks with me every step of every day. Fear is paralyzing and frightening. I don’t like fear – I’d rather be angry. Anger is powerful. Fear is small and shaking and cringing in a corner. Anger is big and loud and gets moving. I never knew I felt fear. I’d pushed it so far away, now its back. Therese B. - Houston

Tradition Nine: "OA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees, directly responsible to those they serve."

During my first eight years in OA, I was often asked how I kept my enthusiasm for working my program. To be honest I never really knew how to answer because the excitement of recovery never diminished for me. I was always grateful that I no longer weighed three hundred pounds and was not obsessed with food. Each day I humbly thanked God for my new existence and offered myself for further service and growth.

I don’t know when things started subtly changing inside me. Perhaps it started with making judgments of others. Self-righteousness feels so good that I might have let it slip by on my daily inventory. Perhaps it started by hiding a bad motive under a good one in order to rationalize my criticism.

Looking back I realize that my spiritual life was affected first. I overloaded myself with school, work, and family, and no longer had time for OA service, prayer, or reading program literature.

This decline in my spiritual life soon engulfed me emotionally. My teenage son’s problems scared me deeply, and this tremendous fear was accompanied by self-pity and resentment. In retrospect it amazes me that I so easily ignored and accepted a decline in both my spiritual and emotional health without questioning and without concern.

Food was not far behind me now. I started snacking at movies again, something I hadn’t done in a long time – and I’d added a nighttime snack. I often felt very full and, after each weekend, wore my "fat clothes" for a couple of days. If I wasn’t in full relapse, I was very close.

Had I forgotten that this disease is a fatal progression? How could I have been so insane? Most distressingly, only a part of me cared. The other part just felt tired and apathetic.

I know that God sent me some strong messages during that time, but today I can’t tell you exactly what happened or when. I only know that God stayed with me during this hard time, and I didn’t stop praying even though it felt at times like I was merely reciting words. I began attending more meetings, and my group started a new Step study from OA’s new Twelve-Step book. I became acquainted with several newcomers who brought fresh insight into our meetings, and I read a Lifeline article from an old-timer in the program that really touched my heart.

Once again I felt the joy of recovery. My abstinence was good, my emotions were stable, and my conscious contact with God was once more my primary concern. I am certain that once again I am alive by God’s grace.

- Texas USA Reprinted from A New Beginning, p.71-72

STEP 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.

Misguided Children

My personal research on Step Eight has convinced me that the principle of forgiveness, rather than discipline, is more descriptive of the aims of Step Eight. In fact, the word forgive, in one form or another appears at least 15 times in our OA book, The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

There must be a period of healing before making amends. For me to tell someone I am sorry for hating them does not address the painful emotions behind the hate. Many years ago a member shared at a meeting, "First you deal with the emotion, then you deal with the situation."

In practicing this, I discovered that there were some things I didn’t have the power to forgive. Instead, I pretended that they didn’t matter. I excused or rationalized them. Of course, that only buried them deeper. Then it occurred to me to pray for a spirit of forgiveness.

Suddenly things began to happen. All the rage and anger began boiling up and spilling over. I had to talk and rave and cry about it to get it all out. Fortunately, there was an understanding person handy to help me through it.

When my tirade subsided, I was able to think more clearly. What I realized is that I was holding people responsible who really did not know any better. It was like resenting a two-year-old for acting like a two-year-old. I was able to see my antagonists as misguided children and to forgive them for only acting out what they themselves had been taught. It had never occurred to me to forgive them, and I don’t think I could have if I had tried.

My old resentments seemed to dissolve and float away. It was such a freeing experience. It was as if the events I’d resented for so long had never happened.

The spirit of forgiveness had released me so well that there was no longer any need for amends; the negative emotions were gone – all replaced with love – and, even after 10 years, they have never come back.

Discipline is certainly necessary in working every part of the OA program, but the only Step which really focuses on the principle of forgiveness, as I see it, is Step Eight.

• P.M., Charlotte, North Carolina USA

STEP 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
 

Honesty Rewards

Step Nine became the great miracle in my life.

When I first joined OA in 1978, I had moved away from my Ohio home to California. I left behind a broken-hearted man whom I had treated badly. After my first three meetings in OA, the words "made direct amends" kept haunting me. I knew that I had to write to this man and be gut-level honest with him, telling him everything I had done wrong to him and asking his forgiveness. I wrote the letter and mailed it, and I felt that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. It did not matter whether he responded to my letter; I did what I had to do to get well.

Then the miracle happened! He did respond, and I wrote back, and then he wrote, until finally we were exchanging long-distance phone calls. (He was living in Georgia.) Two months after I wrote my Ninth-Step letter, I was on a plane from California to Georgia to visit him. A few months later, we both moved back home to Ohio.

We resumed dating and fell deeply in love. I had the privilege of becoming his wife in 1980. We have been happily and joyfully married for almost 18 years and have two beautiful teenage daughters.

If it wasn’t for the willingness and the honesty that this program teaches, I shudder to think of how different my life would be today. I would have missed out on the most beautiful miracle – the love of this wonderful man!