OA volunteers have helped translate OA literature into more than 30 languages worldwide! But to make that happen, registered OA service bodies must first apply for licensing from the World Service Office. If you have any interest in OA's translation process, you won't want to miss this episode!

Join us as Emilia from Rome, Italy, who has ten years of recovery and is the trustee liaison to OA Region Nine, makes a second appearance on Inside OA to explain the translation process and offer valuable insights along with our host Meg M.

Together they discuss the benefits of giving service as a translator—not the least of which is getting to read OA literature while giving back to your OA fellows! Another valuable service is using OA's glossary template to create a custom translation glossary for your language.

In this episode, we meet Emilia from Rome, Italy, who has ten years of recovery and is the trustee liaison to OA Region Nine, which encompasses more than 40 countries and 40 languages in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Together with host Meg M., Emilia discusses what it's like to serve in a multi-cultural and multi-lingual region.

Emilia shares challenges and fears she has overcome on her journey to being elected as an OA board trustee as well as her successes at the world service level that have directly improve service opportunities for OA members in Region Nine.

Listen in as Emilia also talks about the connection and bonds that come with serving such a diverse region and how OA fellowship and service can provide us all with good lives filled with moments of celebration and happiness.

"Inside OA" focuses on the transformative power of service in action. In this episode, Laurie O. shares about jumping in as an appointed OA trustee, working as a Convention 2025 Committee member, and the many great reasons to attend the upcoming OA World Service Convention this August 21–23, 2025, in Orlando, Florida USA.

This 5-minute inspiring collection of interviews depicts the journeys of several OA members from despair to recovery and serenity. Helpful for newcomers, returning members and long-timers alike. For more information on Overeaters Anonymous, please go to www.oa.org or call the World Service Office at 505-891-2664.

Listen to this compelling and moving story from OA member Matt S., who was the banquet keynote speaker at the 2015 World Service Business Conference held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 27 – May 2, 2015.

In honor of Unity Day, the last Saturday of February at 11:30 a.m. PST, we now offer this podcast covering the topic of Unity. Here is a link to the script in case you would like to read it or translate the podcast. The literature referred to in the podcast is as follows:

• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, First Edition, p. 107
• A Common Solution: Diversity and Recovery, p. 8 and p.2
• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, First Edition, p. 110
• OA Inc. Bylaws, Subpart B, Article V
• Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous, First Edition, p. 117

Bariatric Surgery: Identify don't compare She had surgery after a ten-year relapse. She never stopped going to meetings but kept quiet about the surgery to avoid judgments. Surgery is not the easier softer way. In reaching out she helps herself and possibly someone else. 100 lb. weight loss After a certain point she stopped weighing: "If I'm going to die I can eat and die happy". Literature from a co-worker led her to finding hope at her first meeting. Willing to let go of the food she followed her sponsor's directions to call three people a day. Step work addresses the emotions underneath cravings. There is no one way to work the program.

Health Issues: This speaker was able to see how handling her health issue and working her program had similarities. LGBTQ: Coming out in OA in the late 1970s and starting an LGBTQ meeting focused on the Steps and Traditions was the start of years in recovery.

English as Second Language - Literature in his language was so important to him when he came into program and learned about OA. Young Person – She found a healthy connection among her body, soul and spirit and has integrity with herself. She no longer has to be in control of everything.

Men in OA - "I have met the enemy and it is me." – A journey to surrender and acceptance and long-term abstinence as a man in OA. Non-traditional HP –In his journey through the Steps, he found conscience and a small quiet voice in his head led him to good orderly direction and the God of his understanding.

This series of 9 podcasts features speakers from the 2017 WSBC Forum - Amazing Recovery: Passport to Unity. There are two speakers in each podcast speaking about their experience, strength and hope; each speaker comes from a different background or uses a different approach to working the Twelve Steps. When we try to identify with those who are different from us, we expand our recovery. 

Relapse Survivor: This is my only recovery This speaker "gave her abstinence away" by working OA as a diet. Weighing 260 lbs. gave her the gift of desperation and willingness to use the steps and the tools. The gifts of 17 years of abstinence beyond a 140 lb. weight loss include no more homelessness, no more hospitalizations and no more bankruptcy. This is her only recovery–she no longer takes chances. By helping others in service she helps herself. 

Ninety Day Program: H.O.P.E. Hearing Other People's Experience This speaker grew up always feeling like she never measured up in the competition of life. Boarding school structure gave her temporary relief from overeating. After graduating she gained 60 lbs. OA Ninety Day meetings provide disciplines that work for her today.

This series of 9 podcasts features speakers from the 2017 WSBC Forum - Amazing Recovery: Passport to Unity. There are two speakers in each podcast speaking about their experience, strength and hope; each speaker comes from a different background or uses a different approach to working the Twelve Steps. When we try to identify with those who are different from us, we expand our recovery.

Bulimia: Our insides are the same
This speaker learned to vomit at age eleven. The disease progressed to periods of anorexia, compulsive exercise, purging with laxatives. Although her food abstinence looks different, the feelings underneath are similar. In recovery she monitors compulsive diet behaviours and negative thinking.

Virtual Meeting: Recovery in Brazil
The doctor told her she was going to die but she couldn't stop eating like an animal. At her first OA meeting she identified immediately, got abstinent and lost 100# in two years. Her OA program lives mostly in virtual meetings where she can care for her daughter at the same time.

This series of 9 podcasts features speakers from the 2017 WSBC Forum - Amazing Recovery: Passport to Unity. There are two speakers in each podcast speaking about their experience, strength and hope; each speaker comes from a different background or uses a different approach to working the Twelve Steps. When we try to identify with those who are different from us, we expand our recovery.

Long Term Recovery: What keeps a person coming back for decades?

A Vision for You: An approach focused on the Big Book of AA has been the road to recovery for this speaker.

An open (meeting with visitors) workshop recorded to highlight the Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi (APID) community in the OA Fellowship.

This series of 9 podcasts features speakers from the 2017 WSBC Forum - Amazing Recovery: Passport to Unity. There are two speakers in each podcast speaking about their experience, strength and hope; each speaker comes from a different background or uses a different approach to working the Twelve Steps. When we try to identify with those who are different from us, we expand our recovery.

OA HOW: Weighing and measuring food and working a more disciplined and structured approach worked well for this person.

Binger: "Food was my friend." Compulsive eating was killing him. His doctor sent him to OA where he found a Higher Power and a solution.

This podcast is the recorded script from the OA Foot Steps Intergroup Daily Meditation Meeting called "On Awakening."

It is a very simple format. It starts with a fifteen minute reading period, followed by the reading from Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 86-88, "On Awakening."

We then meditate for ten minutes, and then journal for fifteen minutes.

This meeting is entirely self-directed, and you can use this recording at any time of the day as part of a daily practice. 

Written in 1980by the late Reverend Rollo M. Boas, this favorable assessment of Overeaters Anonymous offers a timeless truth: compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors are indicators of an individual's starved and suffocated spirit. However, with the encouragement, support, and wisdom of OA's Fellowship, the still-suffering compulsive eater can learn to wean themselves off the debilitating crutch of compulsive food behaviors and find peace in nurturing their spirit. As the individual surrounds themselves with the love found in the OA program, compulsive eating is diminished and a new sense of wholeness and balance emerges.

A short list of titles from among OA's more than 100 literature items available at bookstore.oa.org.

How to find Overeaters Anonymous in your area or online.

Written in 1980, this assessment by Peter G. Lindner, MD, still holds true today. Obesity is pervasive and comes at a high cost to individuals and societies. This big picture is populated by the individual compulsive eater who is held in bondage to their unhealthy relationship with food by their own hopelessness and defiance. What OA offers that can solve the issue for compulsive eaters is "ego reduction," a means of letting go or surrendering their self will in exchange for guidance and care from a power greater than themselves.

Written in 1980, this assessment by William Hader, MD, still holds true today: compulsive overeating is a disease. It precedes other chronic disorders, and applying treatment principles to compulsive eating similar to those used for alcoholism can be very successful.

Dietitian H. Theresa Wright, MS, RD, LDN, explains how coming to understand problems with food as an addictive process improved the program and peer support based care she was already giving. Discovering Overeaters Anonymous, and learning about OA's Plan of Eating Tool, confirmed previous success in her practice and gave her a new and stronger way to provide care to her clients.

Ana's sponsor taught her early in her recovery to use the Tool of writing to work the Twelve Steps of OA and then send her writing in to Lifeline magazine. In this short recording, Ana reflects on Lifeline's role in her recovery and those of her sponsees. Listen and become inspired to send in your story!

A compilation of five keynote speeches that our founder, Rozanne S., was asked to present to World Service Business Conference delegates in 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2001. Rozanne speaks with her characteristic humor and candid humility on such subjects as the origins of OA's Traditions, the importance of principles before personalities, and complicated issues of empathy and sacrifice. Feel inspired to rejuvenate your own program as she ends her addresses with an audibly passionate call for the delegates—and the Fellowship at large—to engage in greater acts of service on behalf of OA.

Rozanne opens up about her life and lengthy journey toward becoming the founder of the Fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous, chronicling how she's overseen the spread of the OA message around the world. Listen as Rozanne speaks with enthusiasm, humor, and joy on the inauspicious yet aspirational beginnings of OA, and gain new insights into how the powers of human connection and compromise shaped our organization from the very beginning.

Speaker Sandy discusses ways to be gentle with newcomers and returners, including consideration of different aspects of unity with diversity. She also covers Where Do I Start? (available in 48 languages at oa.org/start), advanced search options in Find a Meeting, and more Twelfth Step Within resources available on oa.org and bookstore.oa.org.

Recorded at World Service Business Conference 2025.

Speaker Leslie leads Part 1 of this workshop, covering her experience giving public information and professional outreach service (PIPO) and surveying the PIPO resources and ideas available via oa.org, ookstore.oa.org, and the World Service Office.

Recorded at World Service Business Conference 2025.