In a world where food often becomes more than just nourishment, Overeating Anonymous offers a refuge for those looking to break free from the cycle of overeating.

This program provides a supportive community and structured approach to help individuals regain control over their eating habits.

However, as with any support system, weighing the pros and cons is crucial to determine if it fits you. Complementing this journey, the Eating Enlightenment Food Journal App can be invaluable, helping you manage cravings, emotional eating, and binges.

Tracking your eating patterns supports your path toward healthier habits alongside the guidance of Overeating Anonymous.

Just To Be Clear, Here’s My Background & Potential Biases

Of course, please do keep in mind I’m an Eating Coach & Counselor. 

The first time I went to OA, I felt slightly off. 

Perhaps I felt slightly askew because the meeting took place within a church, and I had grown up atheist/agnostic.

Nonetheless, I occasionally went to Overeating Anonymous meetings for a couple of years, and while I really appreciated the community, my gut feeling towards OA never changed.

Today, I wonder if I am just more drawn to Buddhist philosophies than Christian philosophies. Or maybe I am just hesitant around churches. 

I’m unsure; not all OA groups are held at churches. 

And I have other experience that makes me believe OA is not appropriate for treating eating disorders.  I am biased and like to be upfront about my bias. 

As an Eating Coach and Counselor, I use CBT, Intuitive Eating, and other Nutritional approaches to help clients with overeating, compulsive eating, binge eating, and emotional eating.

These treatment paths, I would say, are more in the Buddhist line of thought than the Christian line of thought, as outlined in the twelve-step program.

Despite my admitted bias, I do think there are pitfalls to OA that need to be talked about! 

The Biggest Pro Of Overeating Anonymous

Before discussing the cons of Overeating Anonymous groups, let me first discuss the pros.

I want to be super clear right now! The OA approach can offer a significant benefit.  

For many people, OA is life-saving. If you attend a group, you’ll hear stories of people who hit rock bottom – in terms of food and compulsive overeating- and who even contemplated suicide.

Yes, food struggles are real. People desperately want to stop eating compulsively, but they don’t know how to do so.

I remember feeling a similar desperation, but instead of going to OA, I found a Tassajara Zen monastery off the California coast. I lived in this monastery for 13 months!

Who in the heck joins a Zen monastery unless they are pretty desperate? Let me tell you, I was hopeless and had a strong desire to stop eating compulsively. 

I know the all-consuming feeling of being trapped by your thoughts and feeling like there’s no relief, sanctuary, or hope.

For many people, OA is what Tassajara was for me: a sanctuary, an abode, a place where you finally can connect with other people who are struggling too and don’t know where to turn.

In my opinion, this is the most significant benefit of OA. 

If you are feeling alone, dark, confused, chaotic, suicidal, or have an eating disorder … OA will welcome you, respect you, listen to you, and help you.

This is priceless. 

It’s why, even though I don’t entirely agree with OA principles, I see what OA is trying to do and why I want to ensure I praise OA groups before discussing their cons.

If you are all alone, nothing is ever going to work. 

OA helps with the darkness, secrecy, and hiding and can help you start facing your problems with a supportive, accepting, and understanding community.

Other Overeating Anonymous Pros 

If you are new to healing food, some of the principles of OA will be life-changing, and rightfully so!

These fantastic healing principles include:

Holistic: 

Binge eating, compulsive overeating, and emotional eating all have physical, emotional, and spiritual elements. 

You can’t just expect to follow a diet or white-knuckle your way to healing and health. 

In my private practice, many people who reach out know they have been missing something—nutrition, emotional counseling, or a deeper spiritual purpose. 

This ‘holistic’ principle is important because you can’t heal overeating unless you heal on all three levels—physical, emotional, and spiritual! 

Tools:

There are lots of healing tools OA will introduce you to. 

You’ll learn to pray, to sit in silence, to ask for help, to watch out for your binge eating triggers, to set better boundaries, and to apologize for your transgressions.

Structure:

Frequently, people feel so out of control and trapped by food that they feel unsafe. 

OA offers both a meal plan and, obviously, 12 Steps!

Having a plan and a set of steps can help people grasp something when dealing with existential and immediate chaos.

Mentor:

Perhaps the last step of twelve is the best – giving back to others and sharing your personal experience, strength, and hope.

I want to give Overeaters Anonymous credit here – they do an outstanding, genuinely fantastic job connecting each person to a mentor.

Connecting everybody who wants a mentor is tough! 

Their mentorship program truly highlights why OA is such a fantastic program. So many people want to give back because they experienced something profound!

I hope you can sense that I think OA is good overall. The pros outweigh the cons. OA is a great place to start if you want to stop eating compulsively.

Nonetheless, we must talk about the cons because these are significant, too.

The Biggest Con of Overeating Anonymous

The biggest con with OA is the idea of abstinence.

I want to take a firm stance on the matter because this is where I most disagree with Overeaters Anonymous and feel that it does some harm.

In Overeaters Anonymous, abstinence is where you refrain from bingeing and compulsive eating so that you reach a healthy weight.

This seems innocent enough, right? 

But in practice, Overeaters Anonymous groups also advocate becoming abstinent from trigger foods as well, not just avoiding compulsive eating behaviors.

Instead of only abstaining from compulsive overeating behaviors, the practical application of abstinence in OA also includes avoiding triggering foods. 

Can this OA approach to triggering foods end up causing binge eating? 

What do I mean by triggering foods?

Well, you know, the usual culprits!

• Ice cream
• Candy
• Candy
• Donuts
• Fast Food
• Chips

From my perspective, this is problematic.  By saying certain foods are ‘triggering,’ you start down a slippery slope …

Soon, people say that ‘all’ simple carbs are triggering them. Or that dairy, gluten, and spicy foods are triggering them.

Because if one food is to be abstained from, if one food is triggering, then why not another food and yet another food?

This gets taken to extremes in Overeaters Anonymous, I believe.

People in OA frequently demonize what I consider everyday foods, such as white bread, white rice, plain quesadillas, cheese, and gluten.

Plus, abstinence can also be about weight loss, but weight loss obsession often is the very fuel that feeds an unstoppable compulsive overeating addiction!

Now, here’s the problem: 

When you start saying ‘these foods are ‘bad,’ you stop doing the holistic work! 

In your desire to stop eating so much, you start becoming hypervigilant about avoiding these foods. In almost no time at all, OA can become creepily similar to a restrictive diet. 

And isn’t dieting and restrictive eating what frequently causes people to lose control and binge in the first place?

Again, this is the same problem with dieting.

You’re given a set of rules you try to follow. You spend all your energy on following these rules, which are not holistic. 

If you spend all your energy avoiding simple carbs, you will have no energy left to explore your soul, mindset, or emotions!

Doesn’t this sound exactly like an eating disorder to you?

Admittedly, there is plenty of space in OA for each person to recover from a compulsive eating disorder. 

But based on what I’ve seen and heard, I would say at least around 40% of OA attendees are on some restrictive eating plan, which, in my opinion, just increases their eating disorder struggles!

This is a huge, huge thing that needs to be discussed.

I know abstinence is a critical principle in recovering from alcohol addiction but transferring the abstinence principle to eating doesn’t work so neatly.

Compulsive overeating and alcohol addiction just aren’t the same!

We need food to live! 

Plus, I think more modern health approaches—like Intuitive Eating and health at every size—are more effective.

Both of these approaches are backed by science and advocate less food restriction. 

For example, principle three of Intuitive Eating recommends learning to eat with unconditional permission.

I know this may sound crazy to someone who struggles with compulsive overeating, but perhaps abstinence sounds crazy to someone who embraces unconditional eating!

Overall, the most significant philosophical difference I have with Overeating Anonymous is abstinence. It just doesn’t make sense to me!

Other Overeating Anonymous Cons

The other Overeaters Anonymous issue is a permanent labeling of oneself as an ‘addict’.

I’ve heard of people who, after decades of being in OA, still call themselves an addict. 

Deep down, they believe they are broken. And many are still avoiding many foods like white bread or white rice! Talk about limitations!

But I don’t think it needs to be that way. 

You can learn to be truly free around food. And no, I’m not talking about being ‘free’ and then binge eating right away.

I’m talking about doing holistic, deep work so you can eat what you want without fear and truly be normal with food again.

Because I think that’s the point of healing from overeating, simply returning to food normality or neutrality.

Often I call this peace with food or making peace with food.

But peace with food is just being ‘normal’ with food—just having a nice, pleasant relationship with it.

I don’t believe that you’d call yourself an ‘addict’ if your relationship with food were expected. 

Trust me, I’ve outgrown my binge eating habits, and now I feel pretty standard around food.

On my Eating Enlightenment podcast, I’ve interviewed dozens of other people who have struggled with binge eating, emotional eating, and compulsive eating but who have used approaches like Intuitive Eating to feel free now truly.

In essence, I do not think that Overeaters Anonymous leads to a profound transformation if you still feel like you are an addict – even after decades of work. 

Concluding Thoughts To Stop Eating Compulsively / OA

With that being said, I do not think you need to pick between Overeaters Anonymous and some other eating disorder treatment approach.

I think it’s possible to do both OA and different approaches simultaneously. 

You might need to reconcile some ideas – like abstinence – but some research shows that the community aspect of OA can be beneficial.

I would agree on this point.

Overall, to conclude this opinion piece, I’ll offer an opinion.

Try Overeaters Anonymous. See if it gels with you. But don’t get too stuck on abstinence. There are other treatments available that have different flavors and underlying belief structures.

Get exposure to those treatments, too! 

Meta Description: This blog post is on Overeating Anonymous, a program that helps people recover from compulsive eating. Here’s a simple description of what this organization does and how it can help you overcome your food addiction.