12 step fellowship for recovering from unhealthy relationships with food and body image. Overeaters Anonymous (OA) is a community of people who support each other in order to recover from compulsive eating and food behaviors.
What does working the program mean?
OA is a Twelve-Step Fellowship much like Alcoholics Anonymous. It’s their one-day-at-a-time approach plus their members that make them different from other solutions you may have tried.
At OA there’s …
- No weigh-in
- No membership fee
- No judgment
- No religion (we’re a spiritual group)
- A safe place for everyone (all genders, races, ages, sexual orientations, sizes)
- A program that works
- Hope
- …and there are people who will understand
Their website includes the following features.
- Explanations of the group – its background, principles and methods
- Meeting Finder (In Person, Telephone, Online)
- Free Pamphlets and Posters
- Organization Information
- Podcasts
OA was founded by Rozanne S. and two other women in January 1960. The organization’s headquarters, or World Service Office, is located in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.Overeaters Anonymous estimates its membership at over 60,000 people in about 6,500 groups meeting in over 75 countries. OA has developed its own literature specifically for those who eat compulsively but also uses the Alcoholics Anonymous books Alcoholics Anonymous and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. The First Step of OA begins with the admission of powerlessness over food; the next eleven steps are intended to bring members “physical, emotional, and spiritual healing”.