Breaking up with Overeater's Anonymous: Part 1

Aug 9, 2025
6 min read

Updated: 6 days ago

What Happens in Food Addiction Programs?

For decades, "food addiction frameworks" and 12-step programs like Overeaters Anonymous (OA) have offered what seems like hope: abstinence from "trigger" foods, structure, and a path to freedom.

If food were an addiction like alcohol or drugs - then, theoretically, recovery would look similar to protocols in alcohol or drug addiction treatment. This is the premise of OA's framework - whether it's sugar, fruit or fat - if you are behaving like an addict around it, complete abstinence is the way!

So what actually happens when people try to recover from food in the same way as drugs or alcohol?

I’ve spent a number of years in OA and mixed addiction groups. In this article I'll discuss my issues with OA's core concepts of abstinence, and addiction - and why I ultimately left the program.

The Morality Focus in 12-Step Programs

As mentioned, 12-step programs were originally designed for substance addictions (like alcohol), and they rely heavily on moral and "spiritual" frameworks - although you do not need to be religious to make use of the program. Recovery involves:

Admitting “powerlessness” - You agree that you have no control around food
Abstinence of trigger foods - Permanently cutting out foods that usually lead to overeating
Admitting defects of character - Agreeing that you eat trigger foods because of character traits - such as selfishness
Readings in official literature about how being "fat" is in itself, reprehensible

Research on binge eating shows that shame and self-criticism worsen symptoms - not reduce them

The idea is that we must relinquish our individual desires, feelings and decision-making around trigger foods, by committing to abstinence. Our eating of these foods cannot be trusted, and will incur an addictive-like response akin to alcohol or drugs.

The Problem with Abstinence in Food-Based Programs

In traditional 12-step programs for substance use, it makes sense that abstinence can work - because the body does not need alcohol or heroin to survive. However, we obviously cannot abstain from eating.

Still, programs like OA ask people to abstain from certain foods (often sugar, flour, or any enjoyable “trigger foods”), defining abstinence as a strict commitment to food rules and sometimes to a plan.

In practice, this often looks like:

Attending daily meetings or phone calls
Praying and reciting affirmations admitting powerlessness
Weighing, measuring, and logging food
Reporting food intake to a sponsor
Reporting “slips" to sponsor along with your corresponding personal defect of character

In more intense programs (in which the founders note that traditional OA groups are stated to have a very low success rate), people need to dedicate 25-30 hours per week on talks and homework, daily sponsor check in, and daily outreach calls to other members. This can be difficult to sustain.

How this is similar to dieting and binge eating thinking

When I first started OA, this level of support was a dream. I was desperate, and nothing was stopping me from the binge eating cycle. In fact, I was trying to maintain a weight loss I'd had after a break-up, and my binge eating episodes were worse than ever.

But when standing back to look at it properly - this framework isn’t all that different from the traditional diet mentality that caused my disordered eating in the first place.

“I felt like I had sinned if I ate a piece of bread. I wasn’t just off-plan - I was a bad person.” - former OA participant

Both OA and diet programs rely on strict rules, all-or-nothing thinking, and a belief that your desires around food are inherently bad or untrustworthy. In both, the “solution” is to avoid, suppress, or override these desires, and constantly remember to restrict this food in the background of daily life - rather than to more deeply understand or work with urges to eat.

It also praises strict, unrelenting control over food - with no wiggle room at weddings, parties, caught short at a motorway services - you name it, the food and “addict” storyline dictates your life. So, unless you live a highly regimented and militantly controlled life at all times - you eventually are going to have to eat food that is off plan. And then you'll have to face the addict identity story - whether or not you react badly to the food you just ate.

This can be terribly confusing if you find that you can simply move on after eating, or this can also become a last supper type binge event - if you subscribe to the rationale that you ought never to eat that food again. This behaviour becomes identical to the binge restrict diet cycle.

Are We Really Addicted to Sugar Like We’re Addicted to Drugs?

One commonly cited quote in my OA group was “sugar is more addictive than cocaine”. Sugar was blamed for ailments, disease and addiction.

It was only when I became a nutritionist and understood how to read research that I realised these studies involved rats that were starved before being given sugar. Yes, the rats preferred sugar over cocaine - but only after periods of food restriction.

In fact, follow-up research has shown that this “addictive behaviour” around sugar disappears when rats are allowed to eat freely without restriction. Meaning that the behaviour we label as “addiction” is more likely a by-product of intermittent access (whether real, anticipated, or perceived) - not a dangerous, pathological attachment to cake.

What about in binge eating?

Let’s not deny the truth here. It’s correct that people with Binge Eating Disorder (BED) show increased activation in reward centres of the brain, particularly around highly palatable foods.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re addicted. These people are more sensitive to reward and likely stuck in common patterns of restriction, emotional distress, and dysregulation which causes a sharper drop in mood after finishing pleasurable foods (especially as this group of people have corresponding issues such as depression). This is not the same as substance dependence.

It's also important to make room here for the fact that people suffering with binge eating disorder show stronger concerns with weight and shape than "obese" people without the disorder. We must remember that in programs like OA that sometimes use fatphobic rhetoric: the increase in shame and reinforced negative body image that keeps people stuck in disorder is completely counterproductive.

Any program offering to help someone with eating issues needs to hold all of the sufferers in unconditional positive regard, it should not be remotely interested in what they look like, especially when the relationship between body-stress and binge eating are so intertwined.

Where is the nuance?

"I woke up when I realised that the OA food mentality was identical to when I had my first eating disorder - anorexia."

I subconsciously felt very conflicted about the addiction theory of this program. It did not feel quite right. But the program disallows nuance - instead stating that any nod toward this is the addiction talking.

However, sometimes I would eat sugary foods and feel absolutely fine afterward - satisfied, even. I was confused... was I an addict?

Other times I would eat something forbidden at a birthday party, and then eat more - even if I didn't enjoy it. I took as a sign that I was addicted. (Rather than restricted).

The mind is conditioned to make sense of a complex world by telling stories about ourselves and our identities. We believe those which seem to fit best with our underlying beliefs.

This means that the more we believe we are powerless, the more we may feel compelled to rebel or "relapse" when our willpower slips. And the more we tap into feelings of "f-it" or being out of control. This framing of food choices as moral failings (rather than signals of unmet needs, stress, or dysregulation) can lead to shame, secrecy, and a deeper entrenchment of the binge-restrict cycle.

This is exactly what happened to me. The stories I told myself about my eating behaviours became entrenched in the response I had to eating any of the "off-limit" food. Ironically, By the end, I'd never had a worse or more serious aggravation of my eating disorder, and disordered eating, than during my time in OA.

Please find part 2 of this article ready to read