Overeaters Anonymous (OA) is a supportive community that helps people who struggle with problematic relationships with food. It offers mutual support and a twelve-step intervention plan designed to aid in recovery from eating disorders and body image issues. OA can be used independently or to supplement another treatment program. It's accessible through face-to-face meetings, phone conversations, and online platforms. Joining OA requires no fees and is open to anyone who desires to improve their relationship with food and eating, while respecting the privacy and anonymity of its members.
What is Overeaters Anonymous?
Overeaters Anonymous, also known as OA, consists of groups of individuals who gather at a specific meeting place at a set time. These groups are composed of people from all walks of life who share a common problem: compulsive overeating. This problem may manifest as anorexia, bulimia, or obesity. To join Overeaters Anonymous, all that is required is the desire to change one's eating habits and a willingness to connect with others on a similar journey.
History of Overeaters Anonymous
Overeaters Anonymous (OA) is a twelve-step program founded by Rozanne S. The first meeting was held on January 19, 1960, in Hollywood, California, USA. Rozanne, after attending a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, recognized the potential of the Twelve Steps to address her own addictive behaviors related to food. Since its inception, OA has expanded to include groups in over 75 countries, with meetings held in person, over the phone, and online. OA is designed for individuals facing challenges related to food, including compulsive overeaters, those with binge eating disorder, bulimics, and anorexics.
The Twelve Steps of OA
The Twelve Steps of OA, adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous, provide a framework for recovery. These steps include:
- Admitting powerlessness over food and acknowledging that life has become unmanageable.
- Believing in a power greater than oneself that can restore sanity.
- Making a decision to turn one's will and life over to the care of this higher power.
- Creating a moral inventory through self-searching.
- Admitting mistakes to the higher power, oneself, and another person.
- Becoming ready to have the higher power remove all defects of character.
- Asking the higher power to remove shortcomings.
- Making a list of all persons harmed and becoming willing to make amends.
- Making amends to such people whenever possible, except when doing so would injure them or others.
- Continuing to take personal inventory and promptly admitting when wrong.
- Seeking to improve conscious contact with the higher power through prayer and meditation, praying only for knowledge of its will and the power to carry it out.
- Having a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps and carrying this message to other compulsive overeaters, while practicing these principles in all affairs.
Members of OA often describe the way of life based on these twelve steps as transformative, even miraculous, asserting that these steps have aided them and can help others as well.
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The Nine Tools of Recovery
Overeaters Anonymous provides nine tools to assist members in overcoming food addiction. These tools include:
- Food Plan: A personal food plan guides dietary decisions, helping members understand what, when, how, where, and why they eat. Sharing this plan with a sponsor or another OA member provides accountability. Having a plan for eating will help you to refrain from compulsive eating.
- Sponsorship: Sponsors are experienced OA members who have successfully implemented the Twelve Steps. They share their progress and stories, offering support and guidance to other members in their recovery. Sponsors are able to share the level of their own experience with OA in the hopes of not only helping other members but also renewing and reaffirming their own recovery.
- Meetings: Meetings occur when at least two compulsive overeaters meet to share their personal stories and experiences. These meetings provide a space to identify common issues with food and share the hope found in OA. These meetings are also a chance for members to share the strength and hope given to them by OA.
- Telephone: The telephone helps members feel less isolated by providing a means to reach out to other OA members or their sponsors when struggling. For those who are unable to attend face-to-face meetings, the telephone is another handy tool that can help members feel less isolated in their battles.
- Writing: Writing down thoughts and feelings can be therapeutic, helping members understand their emotions and behaviors more clearly. Putting thoughts and feelings down on paper can be therapeutic and can help you to understand your thoughts and feelings better.
- Literature: OA-approved books, pamphlets, and magazines reinforce efforts to live healthily with compulsive eating. Certain literature can help to reinforce your efforts to live healthily with compulsive eating.
- Anonymity: Anonymity ensures that members can freely express their thoughts and feelings without fear of gossip. As such, faces and last names are prohibited from being used once the identification process is over.
- Service: Members carry the message of OA to others, offering support and assistance in various ways, both big and small. At OA, members continue to carry the message they’ve learned from OA to other members.
- Action Plan: An action plan helps members identify and implement achievable daily and long-term actions. Action plans are there to identify and implement daily and long-term achievable actions.
Abstinence in Overeaters Anonymous
In Overeaters Anonymous, "abstinence" means refraining from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors while working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight. While in AA abstinence means not drinking alcohol, some argue that it is not possible to set out specific foods, because OA's experience is that different people have different food triggers (i.e. foods and food behaviors that cause them to eat compulsively). "Compulsion" is defined as "an impulse or feeling of being irresistibly driven toward the performance of some irrational action." Therefore, "compulsive eating" and "compulsive food behaviors" mean irrational eating or behaviors resulting from an irresistible impulse or feeling. The objective of OA's definition of abstinence is that the compulsive eater refrain not from eating, but rather, from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors, and work towards or maintain a healthy body weight. The program suggests that members identify the foods that "trigger" overeating.
Since individuals are responsible for defining their own plan of eating, they are able to change their plan of eating if their needs and understanding of their compulsions change, without that change constituting a breach of abstinence.
Demographics and Trends in OA
A 2001 survey of OA members in the Washington, DC area revealed that 84% identified as binge eaters, 15% as bulimic, and 1% as anorexic. This was a shift from a 1981 survey, which found that 44.5% of OA members identified as binge eaters, 40.7% as bulimic, and 14.8% as anorexic. The 2001 survey also indicated an increase in the percentage of males in OA, from 9% in 1981 to 16% in 2001. The typical OA member surveyed in 2001 worked in a full-time capacity and homemakers only comprised 6% of the 2001 OA population, in contrast to 30% of those surveyed in 1981. Further, 80% of the 2001 participants had attained a college degree, compared to 59% of those surveyed in 1981. The researcher stated that the typical OA member in Washington was white and highly educated.
Factors Correlating with Abstinence
Research has identified several OA practices that significantly correlate with maintaining abstinence:
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- Adherence to a food plan (including weighing and measuring food)
- Communication with other members (specifically sponsors)
- Spending time in prayer and meditation
- Performing service work
- Completing the fourth step (moral inventory)
- Completing the ninth step (making amends)
- Writing down thoughts and feelings
- Attending meetings
- Reading OA/AA literature
- Educational status of the participant
Spirituality and Recovery
While some research has found that spirituality does not correlate with weight loss, others have found that an increased sense of spirituality is correlated with improvement in eating attitudes, fewer body shape concerns, and better psychological and social functioning.
Success and Challenges in OA
Some research has found the average length of abstinence for bulimics in OA was significantly higher than the average length for binge eaters. However, the frequency of relapse for bulimics and binge eaters was not significantly different. Most OA members who have reported negative experiences in the program are anorexic. This could be caused by OA's focus on problems of eating too much rather than too little. Survey results show that 90 percent of OA has responded that they have improved "somewhat, much, or very much" in their emotional, spiritual, career and social lives.
Changes in Worldview
Changes in worldview are considered critical for individuals in the recovery process, as they are generally accompanied by significant behavioral changes. Many members viewed this lack of self-esteem as deriving from their external appearance. Members describe their sense of relaxation and liberation, and the increasing value of restraint and modesty in their lives. Their testimonies show that, paradoxically, it is by becoming aware of their powerlessness and accepting the self's basic limitations that they begin to feel the recovering self's growing power.
OA vs. Other Treatment Approaches
A significant difference between Twelve Step work and cognitive-behavioral therapy is the acceptance of a Higher Power and providing peer support. OA is most appropriate for patients who need intensive emotional support in losing weight. OA differs from group therapy in not allowing its participants to express their feelings about (and to) each other during meetings.
Criticisms of Overeaters Anonymous
OA has been an object of feminist criticism for encouraging bulimic and binge-eating women to accept powerlessness over food. Opponents of Twelve Step programs argue that members become cult-like in their adherence to the program, which can have a destructive influence, isolating those in the programs. OA contends that the context of powerlessness within the program isn't referring to an individual's flaws, but simply with the acceptance that they have a problem with food that they cannot seem to defeat with their unaided will. The slogan "We are powerless, not helpless," is an example of this distinction.
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