What is OA?
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Overeaters Anonymous (OA) is a community of people who, through shared experience, strength and hope, are recovering from unhealthy relationships with food and body image. Most of us come to OA with a history of failure in our attempts to control our eating and our weight. In OA we have the support of others with the same problem; we can ask for help whenever we feel the compulsion to act out with food.  Instead of focusing on our weight and body image, we use the 12 Steps to change on the inside, so that we can deal with life without having to use food. 
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In OA there is:
  • No weighing in
  • No membership fee
  • No judgment
  • No religion (we’re a spiritual, not a religious, group)
  • A safe place where all are included regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or body size
  • A community of people who understand and share your problem
  • A program that works
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Our symptoms may vary, but we share a common bond: we cannot control our eating or our compulsive food behaviors through our own self-will, no matter how much we want to. This common problem has led those in OA to seek and find a common solution in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and the nine Tools of Recovery. 
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Where Do I Start? Everything a Newcomer Needs to Know, has additional information that will help you get started working the OA program. This pamphlet can be ordered in print format for $1 from the OA bookstore or as an e-book on Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Barnes & Noble Nook. You can also email newcomers@eastbayoa.org to request that a free copy be mailed to you.
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OA members experience many different patterns of compulsive food behaviors. Among them are:​
  • Obsession with body weight, size and shape
  • Eating binges or compulsive grazing
  • Constant preoccupation with food
  • Preoccupation with reducing diets and quick-weight-loss schemes 
  • Using food as a reward or comfort
  • Starving oneself
  • Laxative or diuretic abuse
  • Excessive exercise
  • Inducing vomiting after eating
  • Chewing and spitting out food
  • Use of diet pills, shots and other medical interventions to control weight
  • Inability to stop eating certain foods after taking the first bite
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To talk to somebody on the phone about meetings or other aspects of Overeaters Anonymous, you can call East Bay OA’s answering service at 510-923-9491 or 925-274-9491.