Shameful Food Behaviors/Body Issues

Perhaps you feel that you’re entirely alone – that there is NO ONE ELSE like you. No one that eats like you, that obsesses about food or body weight like you, or that engages in strange behaviors around food like you. Well, you would be wrong!

We have been where you’ve been and we understand what you’re going through. Our compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors have led us to dark places and to extremes we thought we would never go. And yet, go we did! We did these shameful things in and around food and body image because we came to learn that we had a disease – the disease of compulsive eating.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • Are you purging even without bingeing?
  • Are you eating things other than food – substances that have no nutritional value – such as sand, clay, or cotton?
  • Do you repeatedly regurgitate your food?
  • Do you re-chew, re-swallow, or spit food out?
  • Have intense feelings and emotions led you to eat frozen, raw, burnt, or spoiled food?
  • Have you sworn never to eat a particularly troubling food again, only to return to it – even pulled it out of the garbage – because you sense an utter lack of control?
  • Are you pushing off the times when you eat with the intention of “getting through” to your next meal, or controlling yourself until you have that one giant meal?
  • Is food, or obsessive thoughts about food or your body/body image, causing you to lose sleep, struggle with your relationships, or lose interest in your job or loved ones?
  • Does what you weigh or what you look like, come to define your world and your sense of self worth?

If you found yourself answering ‘yes’ to any one of the above questions, and are ready to accept help, then you can benefit from attending an OA meeting, finding a sponsor, and working our Twelve Step program of recovery. You have nothing to lose but your misery! We hope you will join us and come to experience the gifts of the OA program: happiness, joy, and freedom, and a fellowship of loving and compassionate people that completely understand what it’s like and who never judge us!