In Overeaters Anonymous, you’ll find members who are extremely overweight, even morbidly obese; moderately overweight; average weight; underweight; still maintaining periodic control over their eating behaviour; or totally unable to control their compulsive eating.
OA members experience many different patterns of food behaviors.
The idea of OA came to cofounder Rozanne S. at a Gamblers Anonymous (GA) meeting she attended with a compulsive gambling friend in 1958. As GA members shared their stories, she heard her story – not of gambling, but of compulsive overeating. She knew then that the Twelve-Step and Twelve-Tradition programme founded by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and modeled by GA offered her a chance to change her life and reduce her to 152-pound body to a size that would fit her 5-foot-2-inch frame. Not until 1960, when her weight had increased to 161 pounds, could she find other people who shared her convictions.
Her chance meeting with a new neighbor, Jo S., gave Rozanne strength in numbers, even if it was only one person. Together they found another compulsive overeater, Bernice S., and convened the first OA meeting in Hollywood, California, January 19, 1960.
Today, about 6,500 OA groups meet each week in over 65 countries. With OA divided into 10 regions worldwide and approximately 400 intergroups, it helps thousands of compulsive overeaters find themselves through a threefold recovery: physical, emotions and spiritual.
(For more on OA’s history, read “Beyond Our Wildest Dreams”).
Overeaters Anonymous is a Fellowship of individuals who, through shared experience, strength and hope, are recovering from compulsive overeating. We welcome everybody who wants to stop eating compulsively.
There are no dues or fees for members, we are self-supporting through our own contributions, neither soliciting nor accepting outside donations. OA is not affiliated with any public or private organization, political movement, ideology or religious doctrine, we take no position on outside issues.
Our primary purpose is to abstain from compulsive overeating and to carry this message of recovery to those who still suffer.