Overeaters Anonymous

Working the Twelve Steps with a sponsor is an important key to recovery in Overeaters Anonymous. In this workshop, an insulin dependent diabetic shares how she got abstinent and stays in recovery using the Twelve Steps and the tool of Sponsorship. She lists many OA resources for sponsoring and talks in detail about using her favorite piece of OA sponsorship literature, Sponsoring Through the Twelve Steps. This and other OA literature are available at the OA Bookstore: http://bookstore.oa.org/

"Uniquely useful" is how this member describes the opportunity to sponsor when she tells her OA story. After listing OA literature that discusses sponsoring, she tells what she learned from her long time sponsor about sponsorship. Topics include: what is sponsor is and is not; why sponsor; how to pick a sponsor; and how and when to become a sponsor. In addition she shares her perspective on commonly asked questions about temporary sponsorship, frequency of contact, the number of members to sponsor, when to decline sponsoring, how to treat a slip or relapse and other practical considerations of sponsoring.

After sharing the basics of her story, this OA member weaves her experience, strength and hope into two OA pamphlets. The story, "It’s Only Fat between My Ears," in the OA Members Come in All Sizes pamphlet prompts her to share about her gastric bypass and how it didn't solve her problem. In her words: “They could rearrange whatever they want in my stomach, but the disease is in my head and that’s what the 12 Steps helped me with.” She also discusses how all the nine tools in Tools of Recovery help her live and work the 12 Steps. Her love of OA shines through in this workshop!

In this workshop, we explore sponsorship. While telling her story, a member shares how her sponsor relationships have evolved. She discusses how, when and why she changed sponsors and the benefits of being both a sponsor and a sponsee. Together we can recover.

The common solution offered in the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous is the theme of this workshop. A member shares her story and intertwines how OA’s focus on diversity in recovery made it possible for her to recover. The pamphlet A Common Solution: Diversity and Recovery, which mentions four aspects of diversity (program, cultural, gender and life), focuses on how members found help and support in Overeaters Anonymous despite their differences. “Focus on what unites us; not our differences” captures the message of this workshop!

Using the Abstinence PowerPoint Presentation as a framework, this Region Chair explains how she came to discover her plan of eating and behaviors that undermined her recovery. She discusses the statement…”We are either abstinent or we are not!” and explores the idea that a plan of eating is more than what you eat. Body image, Higher Power, sponsorship, service, meetings and action plan are examined. Lastly, she talks about the reason abstinence is so important to her. If you wish to view the Abstinence PowerPoint, go to http://www.oa.org/membersgroups/group-support/#Powerpoint

“Person to Person - Carrying the Message” is the topic for this OA literature workshop. A member maintaining a 200+ pound weight loss shares her journey in recovery and how the OA literature, Steps, Traditions, Tools and a sponsor guide her recovery. She discusses sponsoring, the difference between a suggestion and advice, and how her sponsor’s suggestion to pray and has helped her with the dilemmas of life. To unselfishly share our experience, strength, and hope is the message of the pamphlet “Person to Person: Carrying the Message, Our Special Gift.”

In this workshop, the speaker tells her story and talks about her personal commitment to abstinence one day at a time and the actions she takes to ward off the deadly disease of compulsive eating. The pamphlets “A Commitment to Abstinence” and Maintaining a Healthy Weight” are explored as she shares on the importance of enjoying the gifts of recovery and how continuing to work the 12-Step program of recovery has given her an alternative to using food to cope with life.

This workshop is focused on how using OA’s Tools of Recovery helps us achieve and maintain abstinence. Two members share about their eating history and how using the nine Tools of Overeaters Anonymous—Plan of Eating, Sponsorship, Meetings, Telephone, Writing, Literature, Action Plan, Anonymity and Service—has enriched and supported their recovery. They explore questions like: What does it mean to use the tools with intent? Do I demonstrate my priorities in the way I use the tools? and How do I use the tools to work my program of recovery?

Three OA members share their varied journeys to develop their Plans of Eating, and how a plan guided them to eat in a calm, balanced, rational way, separating eating from emotions. A Plan of Eating is one of OA's nine tools. These members describe how the Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous coupled with the Plan of Eating and other tools helped them get and stay abstinent.

Using the pamphlet A Guide for Sponsors as a framework, a members describes how sponsoring and being sponsored has enriched her program and been vital to her own long-term recovery and the long-term viability of OA. She addresses how to be a sponsor, why sponsor, when should a sponsor-sponsee relationship change and other thought-provoking topics.

Appendices of the Overeaters Anonymous book, 2nd edition (Disease of the Mind, Body and Spirit). Members share how these vital appendices explain how our disease needs to be treated on all three levels and share how they built on this knowledge and recovered using the Twelve Steps of OA.

The pamphlets Plan of Eating and Dignity of Choice are discussed to help clarify the meaning and importance of abstinence and of having a plan of eating to help implement abstinence. A member shares personal testimony on how she recovered using a plan of eating and the Twelve-Step Program of OA.

Another new year, another new year’s resolution. This year will be the year I lose the weight. This will be the year I start exercising regularly. This will be the year I give up sweets. This will be the year I stop lying to myself, my friends and my family about what and how much I actually eat. Have you ever heard yourself make these promises, maybe even wrote them down and posted them on the refrigerator, only to be back in your old patterns within days or weeks? Join us as we talk to OA members who have been there and found another way in OA.

The Twelfth Step in OA’s recovery program says “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.” Recovering in OA is about more than getting to a healthy weight, though that is definitely one of the outcomes you can expect when you work the OA program. Physical, emotional and spiritual recovery will impact your life in ways you never imagined: from healed relationships, to a sense of joy and purpose; from letting go of past traumas and resentments, to a freedom and sense of serenity and ease in your everyday life. Join us as we talk with OA members about how their recovery in OA has given them lives beyond their wildest dreams.