OA drop-out

Why Overeaters Anonymous was the best thing that ever happened to me, and why I had to leave.

I was introduced to Overeaters Anonymous by a recovering drug addict I had met through a Craigslist personal ad. He asked if I’d ever heard of Overeaters Anonymous and I defensively answered that yes, I had heard of it, but no, it wasn’t for me. As if this conversation couldn’t get any more awkward, he then offered that he was only asking because he could tell I was full of fear, self-doubt and insecurity. “Phew”, I said, “I thought you were calling me fat.”

This is where my recovery story began, although it would take another decade before any real recovery took place. I spent 11 years in the rooms of Overeaters Anonymous, but my recovery only happened after I left the program. While I had found the solution in the twelve steps, I had also discovered that I no longer believed that compulsive overeating was the problem that needed to be solved. The fear, self-doubt, and insecurity I had was all tied to my weight and so I spent decades trying to solve the problem of “being fat”, as if “fat” is something to be solved.

In reality, the fear, self-doubt and insecurity was based on the fact that I thought it was tied to my weight. Do you see the difference? It’s 100% mindset. That’s why there are people who are fat & happy and full of confidence, and others who are straight-sized that still believe that others’ opinion of their appearance dictates how they should feel about themselves. Only one person is a trapped inside their own hell, and it ain’t always the chick in the plus-sized body.

In my time in OA, I lost 110 pounds, all within about a year. It wasn’t until after I left the rooms that I learned the cause of why we overeat. It’s not as deep as healing from trauma, or learning to love yourself, or the lie that sugar is as physically addictive as cocaine. It’s actually really simple. We overeat as a reaction to restriction — actual or perceived. Restriction is not reserved for the anorexics among us, no. It is pervasive and ubiquitous. It’s the polite declining of a dessert we really want while saying, “Thank you, but I shouldn’t.” It’s skipping lunch because you have to “save your points” for dinner. It’s tracking every morsel of every bite you eat so that you can mathematically determine when you’ve had enough to eat, regardless of what your body is telling you.

I lost my weight in OA by weighing & measuring everything I ate. 3 meals a day, no snacks. No flour, no sugar, no alcohol. I committed my food to a sponsor and did not deviate from that plan no matter what. So basically, SEVERE restriction. But the spiritual side of recovery was truly a miracle, and it’s hard to deny the value of step work. I learned a lot about myself in steps 4 & 5, and spent a lot of time practicing steps 10, 11 & 12 on a daily basis. I think this is why, as my spiritual recovery grew, it became obvious that my new found eating habits weren’t actually a product of my recovery, they were a product of my disease. The disease that told me I couldn’t trust my body, my intuition, or my hunger. The real disease was not compulsive overeating, it was believing that my body size was an indicator of my worth as a human being.

I continue to walk this fine line between body trust and body disgust, between spirituality and intellectuality. As they say in the rooms, “Take what you like, and leave the rest.” I will keep searching for what works for me, and what I can let go of that no longer serves me.