Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous

We of Overeaters Anonymous have found in this Fellowship a way to recover from the disease of compulsive overeating. After years of guilt over repeated failures to control our eating and our weight, we now have a solution that works. Our solution is a program of recovery — a program of twelve simple steps. By following these steps, thousands of compulsive overeaters have stopped eating compulsively. Here are the steps as adapted from Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admitted that we were powerless over food – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.