The Overeater's Anonymous point is an interesting one, but I think it's important to separate that out from something like Jenny Craig or WeightWatchers. While OA certainly has the stereotype of being a weight loss organization, it's actually much more about addressing the unhealthy power food can hold over certain people's lives and minds. In most cases, we're not talking about people who are just looking to lose a few pounds. We're talking about people who have an addictive reaction to appetite fulfillment. People who lose sleep thinking about what they want to eat for lunch tomorrow or what they ate for lunch today. For some people, addressing a disordered and obsessive relationship to food can result in calorie reduction and weight lose (No, I don't NEED to eat a tube of Pringles every time I feel stressed), but just as often, it means freeing people from the obsessive calorie counting that the author describes in her mother (6 almonds, NOT 7). It's about talking through traumatic food experiences, processing through the shame and learning to set that trauma aside. Certainly most of the trauma comes from our culture, but OA itself can be a safe haven from, not necessarily an agent of, mainstream fat-shaming. I guess what I'm saying is that OA isn't pathologizing our relationship to food, it is addressing a "disordered" relationship to food that is the result of other, more pernicious cultural influences.
In reply to <p>A number of the women in by Lucy
The Overeater's Anonymous point is an interesting one, but I think it's important to separate that out from something like Jenny Craig or WeightWatchers. While OA certainly has the stereotype of being a weight loss organization, it's actually much more about addressing the unhealthy power food can hold over certain people's lives and minds. In most cases, we're not talking about people who are just looking to lose a few pounds. We're talking about people who have an addictive reaction to appetite fulfillment. People who lose sleep thinking about what they want to eat for lunch tomorrow or what they ate for lunch today. For some people, addressing a disordered and obsessive relationship to food can result in calorie reduction and weight lose (No, I don't NEED to eat a tube of Pringles every time I feel stressed), but just as often, it means freeing people from the obsessive calorie counting that the author describes in her mother (6 almonds, NOT 7). It's about talking through traumatic food experiences, processing through the shame and learning to set that trauma aside. Certainly most of the trauma comes from our culture, but OA itself can be a safe haven from, not necessarily an agent of, mainstream fat-shaming. I guess what I'm saying is that OA isn't pathologizing our relationship to food, it is addressing a "disordered" relationship to food that is the result of other, more pernicious cultural influences.