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This site is dedicated to helping individuals recover from
compulsive overeating, anorexia, bulimia, food addiction and
other food related problems. If you are struggling with one
of these issues, you are not alone anymore!
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 overeating
and to carry this message of recovery to those who still
suffer.
Our
Invitation to You
We
of Overeaters Anonymous have made a discovery. At the very
first meeting we attended, we learned that we were in the
clutches of a dangerous illness, and that willpower,
emotional health and self-confidence, which some of us had
once possessed, were no defense against it.
We
have found that the reasons for the illness are
unimportant. What deserves the attention of the
still-suffering compulsive overeater is this: There is a
proven, workable method by which we can arrest our illness.
The OA recovery program is patterned after that of
Alcoholics Anonymous. We use AA’s Twelve Steps
and Twelve Traditions, changing only the
words “alcohol” and “alcoholic” to “food” and “compulsive
overeater.”
As
our personal stories attest, the Twelve-Step program of
recovery works as well for compulsive overeaters as it does
for alcoholics.
Can we guarantee you this recovery? The answer is simple.
If you will honestly face the truth about yourself and the
illness; if you will keep coming back to meetings to talk
and listen to other compulsive overeaters; if you will read
our literature and that of Alcoholics Anonymous with an open
mind; and, most important, if you are willing to rely on a
power greater than yourself for direction in your life, and
to take the Twelve Steps to the best of your ability, we
believe you can indeed join the ranks of those who recover.
To
remedy the emotional, physical and spiritual illness of
compulsive overeating, we offer several suggestions, but keep
in mind that the basis of the program is spiritual, as
evidenced by the Twelve Steps.
We
are not a “diet and calories" club. We do not endorse any
particular plan of eating. We practice abstinence by staying away
from eating between planned meals and from all individual binge foods.
Once we become abstinent, the preoccupation with food diminishes
and in many cases leaves us entirely. We then find that, to deal
with our inner turmoil, we have to have a new way of thinking, of
acting on life rather than reacting to it—in essence, a new way of
living.
From this vantage point, we begin the Twelve-Step program of
recovery, moving beyond the food and the emotional havoc to
a fuller living experience. As a result of practicing the
Steps, the symptom of compulsive overeating is removed on a
daily basis, achieved through the process of surrendering to
something greater than ourselves; the more total our
surrender, the more fully realized our freedom from food
obsession. From: "Our Invitation to You" Copyright 1980-2004 by Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Overeaters Anonymous, Inc.
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