Overeaters Anonymous - anyone anonymously out there want to share?!

[Italiangreyhound]

Dear anyone

A few weeks ago I started attending Overeaters Anonymous. If you do not not know these meetings they are free (donations are taken to cover costs) there is no membership and no requirement except that people have a desire to stop compulsively overeating, there is a book which people can buy and follow, which helps people in a 12 step programme. It is all new to me and I felt I needed some support from people who are also using the OA 12 steps.

This is their UK website www.oagb.org.uk/

I have struggled with my eating for a very long time and had tried a lot of other things.

I am a firm believer in finding good support in good places and this is a place I have found support. I have got the 12 steps book and am getting started. The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous

Would anyone like to share thoughts specifically around the Overeaters Anonymous (OA) way?

Like the meetings maybe we can keep from specific references to food or food descriptions and just talk about how we are feeling about our eating and how we are doing and anything else that is relevant to us, how things are going etc, please?

I am a newbie so hope someone more experienced will jump on in.

If anyone who has not been to an OA meeting wants to join in and hear more they can.

Welcome one and all, I know that threads come and go but I will try and check often and if you want to join us, please do.

Yes! I have. My mum acted a bit like I'd joined a cult when I told her about OA. I think she doesn't understand about 12 step programmes or thinks it is too extreme. I think she also felt guilty I'd had disordered eating even though my telling her was very much a 'this great thing is helping me'.

Since then only DH knows, though I may tell people in future.

Glad you are feeling positive Italian.

My food is ok but I'm exhausted because DD is having a sleep issue. Sugar and caffeine more tempting as props when I'm tired.

Thanks Rollermum.

Can I ask about these online meetings, what time is it UK time and was it easy to access?

Please OM me if you would rather.

Thanks

OA this week was very good, very encouraging. I was so happy to get to the meeting, I jumped in the car after dinner and rushed off and got there in record time!

Today I totally surprised myself! I went to the pub with a friend and they had a big table absolutely full of cheese with bread for free!!!! And I did not eat any! Hooray. Neither did my lovely friend.

Glad you got to your meeting and it went well. And yay on the bread and cheese! My office was running a training course with loads of croissants and chocolate brioche, and then it was someone's birthday with chocolate cake. I was a bit sad not to partake but it wasn't too bad, it was more an issue of how to turn stuff down without drawing attention to myself.

rollermum that's a really good point, how to refuse food without making people feel the need to push it on you! Got any tips, please?

Thanks.

I generally try not to say anything until I have to - often people don't notice who is having what.

At work I was heading out the door, so that was fine.

I think in future I will tell people I don't eat gluten because it disagrees with me, but I feel I need to be slimmer first so it doesn't sound like another fad.

I had a good allergy test once - York Test - so I sometimes mention that. I think the science isn't proven though.

I suppose being diabetic is quite a good excuse to avoid cakes! Today I popped a piece of Rensdhaw chocolate icing in my mouth and my dd shouted 'Mum, you can't have that!" So I had to spit it out! If I was just trying to eat healthily I would probably have eaten it! But having a medical reason is a 'good' reason 9for self and others) in the sense I really know I am preserving me and sometimes this means I will miss out.

The cake in question is a special one so I'm sad not to get to try it but my health comes first.

All going well, feeling so supported by the group.

Rollermum and Accrossthepond can you say anything about service as part of recovery?

Tools of Recovery

Service
Carrying the message to the compulsive overeater who still suffers is the basic purpose of our Fellowship; therefore, it is the most fundamental form of service. Any form of service—no matter how small—that helps reach a fellow sufferer adds to the quality of our own recovery. Members who are new to OA can give service by getting to meetings, putting away chairs, putting out literature, talking to newcomers, and doing whatever needs to be done for the group. Members who meet the abstinence requirement can give service beyond the group level in such activities as intergroup representative, committee chair, region representative or Conference delegate. There are many ways to give back what we have so generously been given. We are encouraged to do what we can when we can. “A life of sane and happy usefulness” is what we are promised as the result of working the Twelve Steps. Service helps to fulfill that promise.
As OA’s responsibility pledge states: “Always to extend the hand and heart of OA to all who share my compulsion; for this, I am responsible.”

Also, Rollermum and Accrossthepond can you say anything about Anonymity as part of recovery?

Anonymity

Anonymity
Anonymity, referred to in Traditions Eleven and Twelve, is a tool that guarantees we will place principles before personalities. The protection of anonymity offers each of us freedom of expression and safeguards us from gossip. Anonymity assures us that only we, as individual OA members, have the right to make our membership known within our community. Anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television and other public media of communication means that we never allow our faces or last names to be used once we identify ourselves as OA members. This protects both the individual and the Fellowship.

Within the Fellowship, anonymity means that whatever we share with another OA member will be held in respect and confidence. What we hear at meetings should remain there. However, we understand that we must not allow anonymity to limit our effectiveness within the Fellowship. It is not a break of anonymity to use our full names within our group or OA service bodies. Also, it is not a break of anonymity to enlist Twelfth-Step help for group members in trouble, provided we are careful to refrain from discussing any specific personal information.

Another aspect of anonymity is that we are all equal in the Fellowship, whether we are newcomers or seasoned longtimers. And our outside status makes no difference in OA; we have no stars or VIPs. We come together simply as compulsive overeaters.

Anonymity is what allows us to open up and 'tell our stories' to others like us. If we ate a whole cake we want to know that those we tell will not only understand, but won't go trumpeting it around, even to people we don't know. Our struggles stay within a safe group. Some OAs may need to relieve themselves of other burdens, molestation, domestic abuse, other addictions. This gives them a safe place to stand and say "This is me. This is what happened". That can lead to healing and thus stopping using food as a tool.

Service is giving to others the help we have gotten in whatever way we can. Whether it's helping out in practical ways at meetings or offering a hand-hold to someone else who is struggling. In helping others we help ourselves. It's a way of acknowledging that the food addiction doesn't have to consume us nor does it use up every ounce of strength we have. There is still enough within us to help others.

I have struggled with fully understand what both of these mean in practice to be honest, so it is useful for me to read both those texts and your response Across. I have only been to one meeting and the anonymity bit wasn't really touched on, though I may have been too upset to take it on board at that time. Obviously I wouldn't discuss what I had heard, but in terms of recruitment it feels like it would be easy to interpret it too strictly. I was thinking yesterday about obesity in the UK and the news that they want to carry out a lot more gastric band / bypass operations as the answer and I thought it is a shame that OA isn't better known. I know it is about attraction, not promotion, but I suppose I am questioning that a little.

The service thing completely makes sense - I can imagine helping someone just strengthens your own OA life too. In fact I text a buddy and call occasionally and it is good to help her even though it is a two way thing.

I think sponsoring is the big one, but that is later during the steps I think.

On another note I am working through my Step 4 at the moment and finding it quite tough. My sponsor is keen I do it quickly but I am dragging my feet.

Your sponsor should be able to work at your pace, as long as you are making progress. Each path is individual. Some steps will be easy, others will strike very close to our hearts and take more time and thought.

Today's society is very much about the 'quick and painless' cure. Thus the rush to gastric band. I think they should call it gastric 'band-aid'! It treats the symptom, not the cause. People (and medical science) don't want to put in the effort to retrain their eating habits nor have to wait for results. I've known people who have had gastric band, but have put the weight (or a good portion of it) back on!

Goodness rollermum when you say ... was thinking yesterday about obesity in the UK and the news that they want to carry out a lot more gastric band / bypass operations as the answer and I thought it is a shame that OA isn't better known. I know it is about attraction, not promotion, but I suppose I am questioning that a little. I know exactly what you mean.

I feel sad that all those years I was eating so badly and I think no one ever said to me about OA except the one dear friend who eventually accompanied me to the OA group, one person in almost 25 years!

Gastric band etc and surgery, I worry, if the people suffering from eating disorders do not actually overcome the issues they will probably never be free of the food.

I read this... "The band is designed to curb your hunger by creating satiety on smaller portions of food. The band works when you eat fewer total calories each day! And the band works when you get full on solid food."

Adjustable Gastric Band Surgery: 3 Month Follow-Up

So if people with eating disorders get Gastric Band Surgery and do not control their eating, but consuming large quantities of unfilling but liquidised foods, called slider foods, they will continue to consume large quantities of calories.

I also worry about complications etc from surgery.

Rollermum you said "
On another note I am working through my Step 4 at the moment and finding it quite tough. My sponsor is keen I do it quickly but I am dragging my feet.".

Do you know why you are dragging your feet?

Accrossthepond I agree with you totally about the band, that was what I was getting at (I typed before I read your comment!) and I remembered on Supersize vrs Superskinny a man in the USA who has had a band and was (in his own words I think) 'abusing slider foods'.

I was looking for that episode and found this one!

It's 38 minutes in and lasts about 5 minutes. It's OA!

Thanks for replying Roller and Across.

Hey can I join I am doing OA around 2 months abstinent from binge eating, doing OA and doing the steps. Feels surreal but also amazing. Longest I have ever done without binging.

Gumnast of course you can join us, welcome.

I'm struggling a bit with having diabetes. i went to an information day this week and I felt really sad that so many foods could affect diabetes. I aslo know I have said to people it is reversible but it seems not, just controllable. I feel sad but I also feel it is not my fault. 60% of population are overweight or obese but only 6% have diabetes! I had been feeling it was all my fault but there is sometimes a genetic component and my dear late father had it and also my auntie, my mum's sister, who is rake thin has it.

Oh dear sounds hard but I guess accepting it and learning to live with it will start you on your journey. Be kind to yourself it must be a shock.

Have you started doing the steps? I'm doing the steps with a sponser through the oa step book and am just onto step 3.

Also just worked out some eating guidelines which seem to be right for me and are freeing ne from the obsession to overeat

Gumnast well done, I juts realised I wrote your name wrongly last night, sorry I was tired.

I have started the steps but have no sponsor yet.

How are you working with the sponsor, can I ask? Face to face, phone, email, text? How often do you speak/see each other and how did you find them?

And are you in the UK?

Thanks, and only answer what you wish to, or PM me, or both or neither!

On the gastric band stuff - yes I completely agree the underlying cause needs addressing. My phone buddy in OA said at the UK conference someone joined OA when he found himself melting a Mars Bar just to be able to fit it in. Really is a band aid as Across said.

Sorry you are down about your diabetes Greyhound. I feel the same about being hypothyroid - like it is unfair and for me I think not accepting it has affected my life in lots of ways. I am writing about it in Step 4.

I am dragging my feet because I'm relevant to open the box of resentments and fears in case they overwhelm me. My sponsor is willing to go at my pace, but I guess wants to encourage me past the hesitancy. I have done quite a bit of it now but feel a bit numb, I think I need to get more down.

Welcome Gumnast, and well done on your abstinence! It feels so different this time for me and I get the sense you feel that too?

Italian not sure if I mentioned already, but I found my sponsor via the online site / chat rooms 12StepsforCOES. You can request a list of sponsors and them email one that chimes with you. Mine is in the UK too, but we haven't met. It is great to have her - she has a load of great written tools to do the steps. We talk once a week on the pgone, I email her a report everyday of foods and some emotional bits and I next / call when wobbly. Is great even though we have very different approaches to food and abstinence.

I am doing the steps with an oa sponser through the oa step working book. See her at meetings and work through the book and see her once a month

I'm the UK. Massive changes happen

Is that the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions Gumnest? I know there are a few ways of doing it.

Mine follows the AA Big Book, but really the Lawrie OA reading of that (e.g. Step 4 forms etc from theOA Big Book websire). I'm finding really powerful, glad you are too.

Thanks Rollermum is there a link to finding a sponsor. I can't quite imagine the idea of a sponsor you have not met, but I quite like the idea of it.

I am not sure how I feel about writing a list of what I eat, my counsellor has asked me to do this if it is OK for me, but not if it makes me feel restricted. She thinks one of my triggers is the feeling I am going to be restricted.

I am making some progress but it is slow and I feel quite daunted now that I have diabetes! It does feel so sad and I know my daughter might get it and that makes me sad too.