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 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, the 12 Steps help us 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 compulsive food behaviors through willpower, no matter how much we want to. This common problem has led us to seek and find a common solution in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions and the nine Tools of Recovery. 
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To talk to an OA member on the phone, call East Bay OA at 510-923-9491 or 925-274-9491.
OA members have many patterns of compulsive food behaviors. Among them are:​
  • Obsession with body weight, size and shape
  • Eating binges or continual grazing
  • Constant preoccupation with food
  • Repeated attempts at diets and 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
  • Using diet pills, shots and other medical interventions 
  • Unable to stop eating certain foods after the first bite
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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 downloaded free or you can email [email protected] to request that a free copy be mailed to you. (Please include the address where you receive postal mail; we mail to the US and Canada only.)
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