12 Steps and 12 Traditions

12 Steps and 12 Traditions

WHAT ARE THE 12 STEPS AND 12 TRADITIONS?
The Twelve Steps are the heart of the OA recovery program. They offer a new way of life that enables the compulsive eater to live without the need for excess food. The ideas expressed in the Twelve Steps, which originated in Alcoholics Anonymous, reflect
practical experience and application of spiritual insights recorded by thinkers throughout the ages. Their greatest importance lies in the fact that they work! They enable compulsive eaters and millions of other Twelve-Steppers to lead happy, productive lives. They represent the foundation upon which OA is built.

Twelve Steps

  1. We admitted 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 wherever 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 knowledge of His will for us and the
    power to carry that out.
  12. 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.

Twelve Traditions
The Twelve Traditions are the means by which OA remains unified in a common cause. These Twelve Traditions are to the groups what the Twelve Steps are to the individual. They are suggested principles to ensure the survival and growth of the many groups that compose Overeaters Anonymous.

Like the Twelve Steps, the Twelve Traditions have their origins in Alcoholics Anonymous. These Traditions describe attitudes which those early members believed were important to group survival.

  1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon OA
    unity.
  2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He
    may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted
    servants; they do not govern.
  3. The only requirement for OA membership is a desire to stop eating compulsively.
  4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or OA
    as a whole.
  5. Each group has but one primary purpose — to carry its message to the compulsive
    overeater who still suffers.
  6. An OA group ought never endorse, finance or lend the OA name to any related
    facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert
    us from our primary purpose.
  7. Every OA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
  8. Overeaters Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service
    centers may employ special workers.
  9. OA, as such, ought never be organized; but we may create service boards or
    committees directly responsible to those they serve.
  10. Overeaters Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the OA name
    ought never be drawn into public controversy.
  11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need
    always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, films, television
    and other public media of communication.
  12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all these Traditions, ever reminding us to
    place principles before personalities.

Tools of Recovery

In working Overeaters Anonymous’ Twelve-Step program of recovery from compulsive overeating, we have found a number of tools to assist us. We use these tools regularly to help us achieve and maintain abstinence and recover from our disease.

A Plan of EatingTelephone
SponsorshipWriting
MeetingsAction Plan
AnonymityService

In Overeaters Anonymous (OA), the Statement on Abstinence and Recovery is “Abstinence is the action of refraining from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors while working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight. Spiritual, emotional and physical recovery is the result of living the Overeaters Anonymous Twelve-Step program.” Many of us have found we cannot abstain from compulsive eating unless we use some or all of OA’s nine tools of recovery to help us practice the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

Tools of Recovery. © 2011 Overeaters Anonymous, Inc. All rights reserved.
For further information on the tools, please visit the Tools of Recovery page on oa.org. All images used on this website were obtained through resources in which there is no attribution required.

For more information about OA, please go to the OA.org website.

Here are three brief readings we recommend to start with