›› 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 with them. I promise.
››
A Healthy Dose of Good Advice
