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Mill Creek OA 100 Pounder Speaker Meeting
Speakers who have lost 100 pounds tell their stories.

Join Laurie S.  for her memorable story of a nearly-100 pound weight loss, starting with her family of compulsive eaters and drinkers in New Orleans, what it was like to be part of three generations of dieters (with her mother and grandmother), and what it was like to go to fat camps. She describes what happened when her therapist recommended OA, what a “gray sheet” is, what happened to her in an abandoned church that made her question OA, why Hurricane Katrina affected her strongly, what disgusting thing she did to chocolate that made her return to OA, what she decided to do that made her stick with OA for 6 ½ years of abstinence, what she means by “cosmic oneness” and “GUS” and how it helps her spiritually, why she thought she was worse than Hitler, why cleaning up a room kept her coming back to OA, who her “best boyfriends” were that were getting her fat, and the three words she uses to create her food plan.

Direct download: LaurieS_2012_10_28.mp3
Category:speaker -- posted at: 12:00am PDT

You’ll be encouraged as Sharon P (five years of abstinence) and her sponsor Alice C (seven years abstinence) tell their stories.

First, Alice tells you her story, beginning with what it was like when she changed from being an active, thin child to being an overweight woman of 240 pounds. She tells you how she lost 90 pounds within eight months of being invited by a bulimic friend to OA, and kept it off despite cancer and family tragedy.

Sharon then tells of her childhood as an overweight girl who never liked herself. She tells why her first 10 years in OA were in an out of abstinence, and then explains how she managed to maintain abstinence for the past five years. She shares how she went from not wanting to know about God to knowing that God has a plan for her.

This is a team story of friendship and hope you won’t want to miss.

Direct download: SharonP_AliceC_2012_10_21.mp3
Category:speaker -- posted at: 12:00am PDT

Mickey B. tells in his humorous, friendly way how OA has given him 11 years of normal weight, down 85 pounds. You’ll enjoy his fascinating story, starting with blurred memories as a boy in war-torn Ireland, where he was amazingly less focused on the violence going on around him than on scavenging Mars Bars from bombed grocery stores! Many years after immigrating to California, failing at diets and other “logical plans”, he tells how the guilt he felt when he binged led him to OA, and how astonished he was that it actually worked, allowing him to focus more on people than food once he was abstinent gained empathy for others. If you’ve ever dropped out of OA, you may relate to how he reached step 4 and then stopped all tools and steps, which led to guilt, depression, drugs, binge eating on airline food (!), then dropping out of OA. He tells what he ate in public that embarrassed him so much that he rejoined OA, and the strange thing he does when running. You will like his thoughts on how he deals with negative and depressing thoughts and stays positive and abstinent, and what he considers the key ingredient for success in OA.

Direct download: MickeyB_2012_10_14.mp3
Category:speaker -- posted at: 12:00am PDT

Nancy J. has 39 years in OA (14,090 days, she says!), and is a grateful compulsive overeater because OA gave her a chance at permanent abstinence. Her fascinating story starts as a child suffering under a raging alcoholic father who beat her, where she learned to use food to cover the pain, reaching 175 pounds at 12 years old. She describes how the diet pills her doctor prescribed resulted in her being a speed addict, and cycling through 20 years of diet plans. A friend brought her to OA and became her sponsor, and Nancy relates the humorous kind of "can you top this" competition they had that degenerated into bragging. She will tell you how she achieved abstinence, including what her "gray sheet" and other food plan experience was, how she successfully used "act as if" and "do it anyway", what it took for her to treat her disease seriously, how to deal with food that calls to her, how she used AA to help her OA program, how she deals with her "fat days", and what God will do if she stays abstinent.

Direct download: NancyJ_2012_10_07.mp3
Category:speaker -- posted at: 12:00am PDT

Rick F. has a special success story that will touch you, especially if you have ever dropped out of OA or have multiple addictions. He tells you how he was a normal weight until third grade, but he rose to a top weight of 490-- despite the many diets and he and his mother went on--as he learned to obsess on food as his compulsively-eating parents praised him for cleaning his plate and “packing away food”. They showed him that food was used to show love. He helped them hide their alcoholic foods from each other. After college he binged as he committed other compulsive behaviors including smoking, drugs, and alcohol. A friend recommended OA in the 80s, by which time he just took the food plan and left, not taking action. He returned to OA four years later but became a perfectionist and lacked spiritual tools, so when his father died he binged and left OA again. His weight continued to rise, and he returned OA again at 480 pounds because he was lonely. By the time he hit 490, he started to act on the spiritual side of OA, and took a sponsor. The last two years he has surrendered 230 pounds to reach a normal weight. He shares how he has become comfortable in his own skin, what gifts he gains each 24 hours, why he needed a sponsor, the best thing about addition that learned from OA, and how he gets through the discomfort of doing certain steps.

Direct download: RickF_2012_09_30.mp3
Category:speaker -- posted at: 1:00pm PDT