Help for Overeaters: Where OA Meetings and Professional Counseling Meet

If you have started calling yourself an overeater, you have already done something most people never do: you have named the problem honestly. In San Antonio, overeaters have two powerful and complementary resources, the free peer fellowship of Overeaters Anonymous and the professional clinical treatment offered at Bariatric Counseling Center, and the strongest recoveries we see use both.

Bariatric Counseling Center is the only program of its kind in Texas, accredited with The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval in 2023. This page explains what OA offers, what professional counseling for overeaters adds, and how to combine the two, whether you are in San Antonio or anywhere in Texas by telehealth.

Overeaters Anonymous in San Antonio: What It Is and What It Does Well

Overeaters Anonymous is a twelve-step fellowship for compulsive overeaters, modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. Meetings are free, anonymous, and run by members rather than clinicians. The San Antonio intergroup hosts meetings across the city and online, and for many overeaters, OA is the first place they ever say out loud what food has become in their life.

What OA does well is community and accountability. Compulsive overeating thrives in secrecy, and a room full of people who nod because they have lived it is genuinely therapeutic. Sponsorship, daily contact, and the structure of the steps give many members a scaffolding they can lean on for years.

What OA does not claim to be is treatment. There are no licensed therapists running meetings, no individualized assessment, no dietitian designing your food plan, and no clinical protocol for the depression, anxiety, or trauma that so often sit underneath compulsive eating. OA’s own literature encourages members to seek professional help for those pieces. That is where we come in.

Professional Counseling for Overeaters at BCC

Bariatric Counseling Center provides the clinical layer that a fellowship cannot: structured, evidence-based treatment for compulsive overeating, binge eating disorder, food addiction, and emotional eating, delivered by a licensed multidisciplinary team.

Our core offering is an intensive outpatient program (IOP): about three months and roughly 30 sessions, meeting two to three times per week. Choose the morning track (11am to 2pm, Tuesday through Friday), the evening track (5:30 to 8:30pm, Monday through Thursday), or Saturdays (10am to 1pm). The evening and Saturday tracks were built for working adults, and many clients attend OA meetings during the same season of treatment.

Your team includes Licensed Mental Health Professionals, both Clinical Psychologists and Licensed Professional Counselors, working alongside Registered Dietitians, a Registered Nurse, and a professional chef. Treatment draws on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and CBT-E, Dialectical Behavior Therapy and RO-DBT, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, in individual, group, and family formats. Because overeaters have to keep eating the very thing they struggle with, we also teach mindful eating, run cooking classes, and lead guided grocery store tours, practical exposure work that no weekly therapy hour can replicate.

We want to be clear about the relationship: BCC is not a replacement for OA, and OA is not a replacement for treatment. Think of it the way many people think of AA and addiction counseling. The fellowship gives you people; the program gives you clinicians, an assessment, a plan, and measurable progress. Clients who do both tend to keep what they gain. This is outpatient care, not inpatient, residential, or partial hospitalization, and we do not prescribe medication.

Insurance, Telehealth, and Access Across Texas

OA meetings are free. Professional treatment usually is not, but for most of our clients it is covered. BCC works with Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare, Tricare, Humana, UMR, Carelon, Oscar, Imagine Health, Sana, MultiPlan, Meritain Health, ComPsych, Curative, 90 Degree Benefits, and Healthcare Highways. CareCredit is accepted, and if your insurance denies a claim, we file appeals on your behalf at no cost.

We are located in the Medical Center area of San Antonio, and the entire program is available by telehealth to adults anywhere in Texas. If your town has an OA meeting but no eating disorder specialist within a hundred miles, you can attend your meeting locally and do your clinical treatment with us on a screen.