WELCOME

This recovery support group's purpose is to conquer the painful effects of eating disorders. To that end we support each other as family.

We seek to apply the 8 Recovery Principles to our lives and to our relationships. We welcome you. We cannot fix your problems, and we will not seek to run your life for you. We will accept you and love you. This is a safe place.

When we attended our first meeting, many of us were having a variety of feelings. We were relieved to find a place where people might understand our pain and despair. We were angry that we had to get help and could not manage alone this part of our lives. We felt lonely and were ashamed of the way our lives had become. We had secrets that we were reluctant to share.

Group is not a therapy group or a study group. It is a Christ-centered support group. We do not give advice. We share our experience, strength, and hope with each other. Here we learn a new way of living. We learn, at our own pace, to experience in a healthy way intimacy and sharing with others. We learn to trust, to ask for our needs to be met, to say no when no is appropriate, to express our feelings, and to hang around when all we want to do is run. Here no one shames us for what we have done or still are doing. Here we have a safe harbor within which to heal, and for that we are grateful. The only requirement for membership in our group is a desire to change our unhealthy eating behaviors. Those of us who have experienced life change through the program offer this challenge to you. This program works as we complete the work with the help and supervision of a sponsor or accountability partner. If you do not have a sponsor or accountability partner, we encourage you to enlist one, complete the written work in the Celebrate Recovery Workbooks and share your work with your sponsor or accountability partner. We are happy you are here. We encourage you to take one day at a time and keep coming back... it works.

EATING DISORDERS SELF-EVALUATION

1 Do thoughts about food occupy much of your time?
2 Are you preoccupied with a desire to be thinner?
3 Do you starve to make up for eating binges?
4 Are you overweight despite concern by others for you to lose weight?
5 Do you binge and then vomit afterward?
6 Do you exercise excessively to burn off calories?
7 Do you overeat by bingeing or by grazing continuously?
8 Do you eat the same thing every day and feel annoyed when you eat something else?
9 Do you binge and then take enemas or laxatives to get rid of the food you have eaten?
10 Do you hide stashes of food for future eating or bingeing?
11 Do you avoid foods with sugar in them and feel uncomfortable after eating sweets?
12 Is food your friend?
13 Would you rather eat alone? Do you feel uncomfortable when you must eat with others?
14 Do you have specific ways you eat when are emotionally upset, sad, angry, afraid, anxious or ashamed?
15 Do you become depressed or feel guilty after an eating binge?
16 Do you feel fat even when people tell you otherwise?
17 Are you ever afraid that you won't be able to stop eating when you are on binge?
18 Have you tried to diet repeatedly only to sabotage your weight loss?
19 Do you binge on high-calorie, sugary, forbidden foods?
20 Are you proud of your ability to control the food you eat and your weight ?
21 Do you have weight changes of more than 10 pound after binges and fasts?
22 Do you feel your eating behavior is abnormal? Do you try to hide it from others?
23 Does feeling ashamed of your body weight result in more binging?
24 Do you make a lot of insulting jokes about your body weight or your eating?
25 Do you feel guilty after eating anything not allowed on your diet?
26 Do you follow unusual rituals while eating, such as counting bites or not allowing the fork or food to touch your lips?



If you checked five or more of the questions numbered 1, 4, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, you may be dealing with compulsive overeating.

If you checked five or more of the questions numbered 1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 25, 26, you have eating behaviors typical of anorexia nervosa.

If you checked five or more of the questions numbered 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, 26, you have eating behaviors common in bulimia nervosa.


We recommend several actions to help you begin recovery:

1. Attend several meetings before you decide if this group is not for you.
2. We encourage you to obtain a copy of the Celebrate Recovery Workbooks and the Life Recovery Bible.
3. Participation in the meeting is your choice. You can pass when it is your turn.
4. You will receive a phone list. Call a sponsor to work with you, as you have questions and as you work on the steps. Use the phone list to call people when you need help.
5. We guard the anonymity and confidences of group members carefully. Do not share who you see or what you hear in these meetings with any person or prayer list.
6. Keep coming back. God will change your life as you apply the Christ-centered 8 Recovery Principles.

Attending this meeting is the first step in confronting the denial in our lives. We are glad that you are here, and we encourage and support you as you grow with us. We love and support you.