The Women's Food Addiction Group will provide support to any and all women who struggle with food issues and will focus on strengthening the individual's relationship with God. This will provide freedom from the ongoing internal battle with food. You can expect to become closer to God through His Word, the Recovery Principles and the love and support of other women.
Do you struggle with overeating or constant dieting?
Have you been on a diet and lost all the weight, but need support not to go back to unhealthy behaviors?
Do you ever feel out of control and unable to stop eating?
Do you eat out of frustration, anger, or fear?
Does it seem impossible to eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full?
Do you eat to feel comfort?
Throughout our lives many of us have turned to food to ease our pain or fear.
We felt comfort in eating and found ourselves turning to food whenever we were hurt, angry or frustrated.
Food became our comforter, our friend.
Some of us may have one certain food that we can not stop eating, or are unable to eat only in healthy amounts.
Some of us may have been emotionally, physically or sexually abused and use food to cope with the emotions of those events.
Some of us may have had healthy eating habits as children or young adults, but at some point in our lives we chose to overeat and lost the ability to discern when we were physically hungry or when we were physically full.
Some of us may have turned to food after obtaining sobriety in other areas.
We thought food was "safe,not realizing it could become our "drug of choice".
We have focused on our body image instead of our health.
Many of us have tried various diet programs, exercising, medications or many other ways of trying to control our eating habits.
We have failed over and over and are left feeling guilty, incapable and unlovable.
We have given in to the idea that there is one perfect diet or pill out there that can save us, if only we could find it.
Some of us believe that thin people do not struggle with food addiction. We have also failed to recognize food as our "drug of choice".
As a result of our food addiction we feel out of control and may struggle with many other areas of our lives.
Some of us have low self esteem which may affect our motivation, and our relationship with God and others.
We came to realize that we could not control our addiction to food and that we are powerless.
We understand that our problems are emotional and spiritual.
We have become ready to face our denial and accept the truth about our lives and our food addiction.
We are ready to accept responsibility for our actions and make Jesus the Lord of our lives.
We are dedicated to learning about healthy eating.
We are committed to learning the difference between physical and emotional hunger.
We are willing to turn to God when we are not physically hungry.
We will begin to view food as fuel for our body so that we will not eat unless we are physically hungry and stop when we are physically full.
We are willing to begin the process of recovery and working through the 12 steps to heal ourselves, and start living the life God has planned for us.
We are willing to find a sponsor and accountability partners.
We realize our group provides a safe place to share our fears, hurt or anger and also is a place to rejoice in victories.
We have become willing to face our character defects and work through these feelings in our group.
We are willing to take the focus off of food and focus on God.
We recognize that recovery from food addiction is not about our body image or what foods we eat, but it is about trusting God and having an intimate relationship with Him.
We are willing to believe and trust in God's love for us, and to see ourselves as He sees us.
We are willing to seek a closer relationship with God.
By facing our fears we have realized that Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are what we need to overcome them.
As we surrender our food addiction to God, we will come to know that He is all we need.
We will continue to seek a daily quiet time with God and will rely on the Holy Spirit as our source of comfort. We will be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
We will use the tools of recovery: calling our accountability partners, journaling and reading the Bible.
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.
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.
Our 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.
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.
|
|
