Overeaters Anonymous Meetings

My life was saved by Overeaters Anonymous meetings. At least one of my lives or one part of my life was. I was a fat baby, a fat kid, a fat teen, and a fat adult. I was born with the genetics of a biological father whose whole family was/is four-hundred-pounders. So I tried all the diets on the planet. The bananas and skim milk for a week, the Atkins, the weight watchers (before points), cabbage soup for a week, measuring, weighing, and weighing some more. I was raised in a step family, wherein each member was tall, svelte, and rugged with muscles and energy. But since I had a different father and therefore a different morphic appearance altogether, when the family was eating pasta I was eating granola and yogurt. My friends would try to help by chasing me around the tennis courts on a bike while I raced in front on foot. Boyfriends would try to help me by commenting on my food. Guess what? It’s not about the food.

I had never heard of Overeaters Anonymous meetings. I had barely heard of Mr. Bill and Dr. Bob, the founders of the papa program, AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), and that was only when I had eavesdropped on parents and their parent friends talking about the one pariah in the town who had a drinking problem (when, ahem, many others did, too, but were of course in denial). I went along trying to do what the program, calls “white-knuckling” it, trying the books and magazines and diets that the stars were doing: the South Beach Diet, the protein diet, the milk and coffee and speed diet.

My mother would worry about my heart and my father would say, “Just don’t eat.” Uh, okay. Doi. But when my life was at the bottom (as they say), when I was reeling from the toxic levels of prescription and other speed and still sitting on the kitchen floor at three a.m. eating from a bowl of stuffing with my hands, my best friend took note and tried a different tact…the one you learn to use after taking in a few hundred Overeaters Anonymous meetings: she handed me a little book of meditations and quotes. (The book was a Hazelden publication, a 365-day/page book that on each day had a quote to think about and a meditative write-up to help you get through the day or night. She said if I ever wanted to come along to a meeting I was welcome.

I am not the typical fat archetype you see on TV or in comic books. I wear cool clothes (or so I used to), am mouthy and direct, and, while I have to stuff myself into shoes one year or lay on the bed to button jeans the next, have never been lacking in boyfriends, romance, or even husbands or proposals from guys who would like to be my husband. I am also not a big joiner, having a tendency to run the show or stay at home and run my own. So I wasn’t real excited about these Overeaters Anonymous meetings that carried on like some clandestine cult of “chosen” ones. I wasn’t into God this and God that, for I was also at the time big on studying the existentialists who had denounced God, and was more nihilistic and hateful than grateful.

Ah, but that is exactly what makes one a perfect candidate for Overeaters Anonymous meetings. While they appear to contain rituals that are rote and mind-numbing and people who are way too into hugging, they also do this uncanny thing of leaving you to yourself until the concept, feeling, or revelation snags you and you’re in and understanding all of it. You get that the rituals establish normalcy. You understand that the slogans give you positive mantras to cling to when the stinking thinking will drive you to drink or eat or whatever you are abusing yourself with. And you understand that the necessity of Overeaters Anonymous meetings is not to scam you out of millions of bucks (the meetings are free or by donation) or to rope you into making paper poppies to sell at the airport (and you don’t have to shave your head or sacrifice chickens or small children), but the Overeaters Anonymous meetings are to give you someone other than your ill-gotten thoughts and self to connect with, to call attention away from yourself and onto others worse off than you, and to force you to take responsibility for your own actions and be accountable to someone (or thing) greater than your selfish self.

Overeaters Anonymous meetings, like all meetings of all 12-step programs, are remarkable constructs that keep millions from destroying what they so unintentionally destroy in their efforts to self-destruct. They help you break the cycle. They help you stop being tired of being tired of…. They help you until you can help yourself.

I am sorry this is so cryptic, if it is. But you will just have to find out for yourself what the program does for you.

Overeaters Anonymous meetings are held all over the world. There are schedules for every major metropolis and every teeny town. Call the hotline in your area for meeting times, and know you will not be compelled to do anything other than shut up and listen. They work if you work em. I promise.