Menu
The Twelve Steps are the heart of the OA recovery program. They offer a new way of life that enables the compulsive overeater to live without the need for excess food.The Twelve Steps are important in the OA recovery program. They help people who overeat to live without abusing food.
The steps come from Alcoholics Anonymous and reflect the ideas of many wise people throughout history. The most important thing about the steps is that they work! People who have problems with food have found them helpful and are living happier lives because of them. The steps are the basis of OA.
The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous
- We admitted we were powerless over food—that our lives had become unmanageable.
- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
- Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
- Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
- Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
- Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
(Permission to use the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous for adaptation granted by AA World Services, Inc.)
