Friday, August 19, 2011

My New Organization: OA Vegan.org

About a year and a half ago, I saw a film on the RAVE diet which is a low fat vegan diet. The film was a bit sensational but I still believed that eating low fat vegan was healthier and might also help me lose the last twenty pounds that I have been trying to shed for nearly three years now. I halfheartedly tried to follow the diet. Doing this, I managed at least not to gain any weight and when I had my cholesterol checked last spring. My LDL was 105 with high HDL.

Last May, I did an enormous amount of research for an Honors Project at City College of San Francisco on the theory that a low fat vegan diet can not only prevent but also reverse heart disease. Although I searched for data that would refute this claim I found the only credible criticism was I could find was that the regimen was just too hard to follow. Having read all this research I was convinced, I was going to try this routine.

So I purchased a kindle version of Neal Barnard's 21 day plan. He advocates not counting calories but just to eat to satisfy hunger and don't eat any animal products or processed foods especially white flour and sugar. But telling a food addict to eat what she wants is like telling an alcoholic that it is OK to drink a beer or two occasionally.

Although the food cravings had diminished and I had a lost a few pounds over several weeks, I still occasionally overate compulsively. I was still occasionally using food the way I used to use drugs and alcohol. I decided to try attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings regularly. I had attended a few meetings in 2009, unfortunately, those meetings were run by a sub-group of OA that is more like a cult than a self-help group. These groups, which refer to themselves as OA-HOW or greysheeters, violate the the traditions of OA which are identical to those of Alcoholics Anonymous. Two of the cornerstones of AA are that the program is based on attraction rather than promotion and that AA unity is paramount. These HOW and greysheet people violate both these traditions by pouncing on newcomers and telling them that they must follow their strict food plan (no flour no sugar) that they must call their food plan in to their sponsors and that they must make five outreach calls per day. I knew this was not not for me so I tried Weight Watchers again, a program which had helped me lose most of my weight but for the fifteen or twenty pounds.


On July 25th, 2011, I found an OA meeting that was not HOW or greysheet. In fact, most of the other members had the same negative experience with HOW that I had had. Since that day, I have attended meetings every week and have maintained my abstinence. (I have a very complex set of rules that I have devised to define my own food abstinence, which I will detail in a future blog.) I am losing nearly two pounds a week and am confident I will reach my ideal weight soon.

Last  Friday night, I made the mistake of attending an OA HOW meeting. The meeting was fine but after it was over, a woman, who by her appearance was a bit less successful maintaining her weight than I was, accosted me and informed me that I was obligated to follow their plan. I avoided a confrontation but firmly told her I had a plan that was working. She tried to tell me that I would need a medical clearance to follow any plan other than the standard HOW plan. I told her I wasn't going to do that and she made me feel that I was not welcome on that group.

In the few weeks since I have been an active OA member, I have read OA official literature exhaustively. OA does not endorse any particular food plan. Still, all the suggested food plans advocate eating meat and dairy products. So the thought occurred to me that if these wacko HOW people can have a sub-group of OA so can we vegans. So I decided to start my own sub-group of Overeaters Anonymous and bought the URL OAvegans.org. I have not done much but put up a single web page but every journey starts with one small step.

http://oavegan.org/




11 comments:

  1. I find it difficult to not eat meat but I try to only eat boiled chicken. When I stopped eating meat, my protein intake decreased and I started loosing weight because I was loosing muscle and coincidentally strength.

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  2. Arg! This blog is over a year old and your link is dead... but I'd totally be into that. If you read this, please let me know if the group still exists!


    Kolya - if you are seriously interested in a vegan diet, I suggest you research health vegan food plans and stop trying to blame your low protein problems on not eating meat. If you had really spent any time in vegan circles, you would know that we get people pushing the protein "issue" at us all the time and its really, really, really, (I'll say it one more time) really, old and boring.

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  3. The latest iteration of the organization is on Facebook:

    compulisve overeaters anonymous, you can email me at
    hnicoleanderson@live.com

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  4. The Facebook group is going strong approaching 500 members.

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    1. https://www.facebook.com/groups/veganovereaters/

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    2. I have been searching for a vegan OA group and so happy to have found this thread. Do we need to email you directly before getting accepted into the FB group?

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  5. I guess the FB page is gone now?

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  6. I guess the FB page is gone now?

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  7. I was apart of an OA HOW group for many years and never experienced anything like you are talking about here. I was loved and accepted just as I am. There were a lot of people who had worked out their own abstinence. NO ONE was ever told they HAD to do anything as far as an eating plan. Greysheet was an option. I am sorry you had that experience but I really don't think it is typical.

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  8. Are there are vegan-focused OA phone meetings anymore?

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  9. OA has been kind and welcoming, always. Part of recovery is to reach out to others during the day. Can call as many as you want and I found it helpful every time I used this tool. No one ever told me I had to do it their way. Calling in my food every morning to a sponsor helped me to put my abstinence first. When abstinent there is no alcohol, drugs, diet sodas, white flour or sugar and food is weighed and measured, 3 meals a day. I didn't have snacks. Black coffee, tea or water only. I sure got relief. Food was no longer consuming my thoughts 24/7. I lost 5 lbs a week and felt amazing.

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