Is this an official OA workshop?
No. This is not an official Overeaters Anonymous workshop. It is a personal website created and maintained by a single individual*, who is a member of Overeaters Anonymous, for the purpose of distributing information learned from other recovered compulsive overeaters, OA meetings, OA& AA literature, and workshops, to anyone suffering from compulsive eating.
“12stepworkshop” has not been approved or endorsed by and is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc, Overeaters Anonymous, Inc or any service entity of A.A.W.S. Inc or OA WSO All content on this site is the sole responsibility of “12stepworkshop”.
Nothing passed along in this study is original! If you’re reading this and any of it sounds familiar, you know who you are! Thank you!
There are no dues or fees for this workshop and I don’t make any money off of anything related to this site.
What is promised in the “Big Book”?
This workshop utilizes the directions from the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous in order to attain RECOVERY!
RECOVERY is defined in OA as the removal of the need to engage in compulsive eating behaviors; spiritual, emotional, and physical recovery is achieved through working and living the 12 Step program
Recovery is a personality change sufficient to overcome compulsive eating:
- connecting to a power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity
- being abstinent one day at a time, peacefully because the obsession to overeat has been removed
- having serenity and peace of mind
- feeling useful; being helpful to others
- no longer focusing on ourselves and our selfish wants and needs
- no longer filled with anger, fear, and shame
- a spiritual awakening “Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.” (Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Edition 27).
- and “we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even food. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in compulsively overeating. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward food has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.” (Alcoholics Anonymous 4th Edition 84-85)
Will the Big Book Approach work for me?
If you are desperate, out of ideas, and ready to do whatever it takes to get well (without condition) then you can and will recover!
Whether abstinent for one day or for many years, if some foods continue to control you; if you’re holding onto a plan of eating by white-knuckling it, then you haven’t recovered by the Big Book definition.
If, on the other hand, you have recovered by the Big Book definition above, you may still want to join this workshop to see if these directions for doing the Steps make it easier for you to carry the message to another compulsive eater who still suffers.
*I no longer eat the same, think the same, or act the same as I used to. As a side-effect of this recovery, I no longer look the same either! To read more about how I was, what happened, and what I’m like today you can click on My Story here.
HOW TO utilize this INDEPENDENT STUDY