Ready to get your toes wet? Try the following to decide for yourself if OA can help.
We suggest trying 6 different meetings.
There are many OA speaker and audio recordings!
… We hope you will join us, as we trudge the road of happy destiny.
In OA we practice the 12 steps and 12 traditions, however most of us find it harder, and for some impossible to recover without becoming abstinent.
Definition of Abstinence
Abstinence in OA is the act of refraining from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors while working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight. Recovery is the removal of the need to engage in compulsive eating behaviors. Spiritual, emotional and physical recovery is the result of living the Overeaters Anonymous Twelve-Step program.
Suggestions for Newcomers
We suggest that newcomers and persons interested in Overeaters Anonymous:
- Attend at least 6 meetings to find out more
- Talk to other OA members
- Obtain a sponsor to help them take the 12 steps and define a personal ‘bottom line’ abstinence. OA as a whole has no opinion on the best plan of eating.
The Twelve Traditions do for the OA Group what the Twelve Steps do for the individual. Just as freedom for the individual comes from the Twelve Steps, so freedom for the groups depends on knowledge and practice of our Traditions.
- Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon OA unity.
- For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
- The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
- Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA as a whole.
- Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers.
- An OA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the OA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
- Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
- Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
- OA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
- Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
- Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television and other public media of communication.
- Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
Permission to use the Twelve Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted by AA World Services, Inc.
Here are the steps as adapted for Overeaters Anonymous:
- We admitted we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted by AA World Services, Inc.
Overeaters Anonymous is a Fellowship of individuals who, through shared experience, strength and hope, are recovering from compulsive overeating. We welcome everyone who wants to stop eating compulsively. There are no dues or fees for members; 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 eating and to carry the message of recovery through the Twelve Steps of OA to those who still suffer.