We compulsive eaters have never cheated ourselves. A full serving for us means enough servings to make us full…and then some. It means an extra dip of a spoon or scooper into whatever serving dish or container we’re holding. It means mounded measuring cups or eating those last bits because we’d “hate to see it go to waste.” We’d rather it go to our waist than to waste!

So why do we resist a full serving of OA?

What’s a full serving of OA look like? It’s about following an ages-old piece of OA wisdom:

• Program first.
• Then family.
• Then work.

Our members share stories all the time about how our illness degraded or ruined their family relationships. How it made them less productive workers or even got them fired. If we don’t put program first there may be no family or job to return to. This disease kills, so eventually there may be no life to return to.

It’s like that old story about a reluctant OA telling a longtime member, “I’ve always had a problem with commitment.” The OA veteran, not giving an inch replies, “You don’t have a problem with commitment. You’ve been committed to compulsive eating for the last thirty years.” We all have the ability to work this program and to put it first. The question is whether we’re in enough pain to listen to the voice inside us that wants to get better.

Here’s 5 proven ways we can get a full serving of OA!

• Treat compulsive eating like the killer disease it is: We can’t BS ourselves about the severity of this disease. It will kill us spiritually, emotionally, and physically. It destroys us from the inside out.
• Keep making meetings: Sometimes we let our minds dictate our meeting schedule instead of listening to our desire to get better. We get “busy” or “tired.” Better to attend a meeting while tired than to be back in the place of being sick and tired of being sick and tired.
• Get, and use!, a sponsor: If we are truly powerless, then we cannot get better alone. We must ask another person for help. If we have a sponsor and aren’t working closely with them, then it’s time to get honest about why we have a sponsor.
• Work the Steps: OA is not an intellectual exercise. We can’t think our way out of the illness. The Steps are an action plan that gets us better. Do the Steps seem scary? Perhaps. But aren’t they less scary than the devastation of our disease? Of dying too young? Of a lifetime of physical debilitation, foggy thinking, depression, and enslavement to the likes of Betty Crocker?
• Raise our hand to sponsor: If we don’t help others, we will eat again. Our literature and experience tell us so. Abstinent but plateauing? Raise a hand to “get someone started.” Done the Steps but feel uneasy about sponsoring? Trust God and raise that hand! Anyone with long-term recovery will tell us that sponsoring is the lifeblood of their recovery.

Get a full serving of OA starting right now!