If we attend OA meetings, work on the Nine Tools of program,
read from the Big Book, practice the Twelve and Twelve, read other recommended OA literature, try to help somebody who is still suffering and if we have a desire to stop compulsively overeating, this promise will be kept for us. In the fellowship of OA, I learned that my name is Sylvia and that I am a compulsive overeater. Later on in the program, my life took on new meaning. I went back to school, got my degree, took the test for a civil service job and went to work. Was it easy? NO! But it was worth all the day-by-day hard work, the struggle and commitment to get better. Now, I am someone special, and I feel important inside the rooms of OA, as well as in the outside world.
Getting to know myself better made me feel healthier. The simple act of taking a shower and patting my body dry with a soft towel was like a celebration, for gradually I became less of a stranger to my own body.
I began to make healthy food choices. I started wanting to get up in
the morning, anxious to get out of doors to feel the cool breeze on my face, to smell the aroma of freshly-cut grass and to look up at the sun. Life was looking brighter for me as I entered college for the first time. I learned to go into my quiet place every day to talk to my HP about all that we had accomplished that day. I stopped looking at my life as one big urgent lump and broke my day into small pieces. Each time I thought about eating something off my food plan, I would change the subject in my mind by doing something good for myself instead. I often want to deviate from my plan of eating. I get fresh air and exercise instead. The idea is to do anything within reason not to take that first compulsive bite when there are so many other viable choices.
— Sylvia H.
Published in the Metro Memo – August 2011