Tavistock Overeaters Anonymous (OA) aims to help people who struggle with their behaviour around food. It is not just about weight loss, weight gain or maintenance, obesity or diets; the OA programme offers physical, emotional and spiritual recovery for those who suffer from the problem of compulsive eating. This could include: obsession with body weight, size and shape; eating binges or grazing; preoccupation with diets; starving; laxative or diuretic abuse; excessive exercise; inducing vomiting after eating; use of diet pills and other medical interventions to control weight; inability to stop eating certain foods after taking the first bite and a constant preoccupation with food. Members find recovery by following a programme patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous. They find that yoyo dieting is a thing of the past and no longer wish to return to eating compulsively. In OA, there are people who are morbidly obese, extremely or moderately overweight, average weight or underweight; some have maintained periodic control over their eating behaviour, while others have been totally unable to control their compulsive eating. The only requirement for membership in OA is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
Kathryn, a 41-year-old mother-of-one, who lives near Tavistock shares her story:
“For most of my life I have either been gaining or losing weight and have had clothes ranging from a size 10 to a size 24. At times I have been obsessed with being skinny – cutting out meals and eating as little as possible in a desperate bid to lose weight to the point where I fainted. At other times I have been obsessed with overeating – shoving as much chocolate, cake and ice cream into my mouth as possible, to the point of feeling physically sick - and then feeling ashamed and bitterly disappointed with myself. I lived my life this way from the age of 12 until my early 30s when I simply could not cope with it any longer. There were times when I would choose to spend my evenings bingeing on food rather than seeing friends. There were also times when I would leave my desk at work in order to go and buy chocolate and cakes which I would eat in the loo.
I felt despairing and thought I would have to live the rest of my life in this insane, self-destructive way, until I heard a friend of a friend in Tavistock talking about how she, too, used to gain and lose weight rapidly and obsess about food. I heard the past tense ‘she used’, and wondered what this confident, healthy-looking young woman had done to change her behaviour around food. So I asked her and she told me about OA – a group of people who had struggled with food - binge eating, restricting their eating, over-exercising or purging. In the same way that Alcoholics Anonymous helps people to stop drinking alcohol, OA helps people to stop problematic behaviour around food. I started going to OA meetings eight years ago and I have learned to eat healthy, appetising meals three times a day. I don’t diet and I don’t obsess about what I’m eating. I wear the same dress size as I did eight years ago because my weight no longer goes up and down and I don’t worry about what other people think of my weight because I know I am healthy, happy and, most importantly, sane. Going to an OA meeting and admitting I had a problem with food was hard – but it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done and I’ve never regretted it. I would urge anyone who struggles with food to come along and give it a go.”
Tavistock OA meets on Mondays from 7.30pm to 8.30pm at Trident House, 2 Taylor Square. For more information about Overeaters Anonymous log onto www.oagb.org.uk or telephone 07000 784985.