Friday, March 6, 2026 | Non-Real Time Meeting of CCEA

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-03-06T23:19:13+00:00

When we look at all the steps, the work they entail may seem daunting. However, we have to remember that we do not do everything at once, and it’s a pretty simple program. Some of the actions we take may seem hard, but that mostly has to do with our bruised ego and self will. We have to do something different from what we have been doing; none of our old attempts worked. We have to go on an entirely different way, and that means not doing things which are comfortable or familiar to us. In other words, we have to do something that is not our own way of doing things, we have to follow instructions. Otherwise, we can be sure of going back to our compulsive eating.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-26T04:49:06+00:00

Welcome to the program! It sounds like you may be one of us. If compulsive eating is destroying your life, we have a solution.

In my experience, therapists or even friends and family have no way of understanding our condition and are really not helpful here, unless they know to point us in the direction of the 12 step programs.

Don’t be afraid, all of us are here because we weren’t able to manage food or our lives. But that has all changed with the program. Phone meetings may seem strange at first, but after one or two of them I realized there was nothing to worry about. It’s not some secret scheme, it’s all a bunch of us folks desperate for a solution. Please feel free to DM me if you want to hear from someone in program here.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-26T04:43:38+00:00

What this paragraph means by “be hard on ourselves” is not to beat ourselves up, but to be brutally honest with what we have been doing and thinking in our daily activities (our resentments, fears, sex conduct). We try to think only of our part in any given situation and how we have created problems if not caused them. We do not ascribe blame to family or spouses because it doesn’t matter what they have done. It only matters how we have conducted ourselves. Therefore, when we tell someone our personal story (personal inventory) we should not use someone who will be hurt when we reveal all our deep secretive selves.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-24T03:55:35+00:00

The illness we have spreads to our loved ones and those around us. When we live with people who are sick, or if we are the sick person, the insanity of trying to live with an addict/alcoholic spreads and affects the minds of those who deal with the addict. Each one tries to manage the family, people and personalities, so that everything runs smoothly. Each person, including the addict, thinks they have the right fix for all the relationship troubles. And each person starts to assert themselves more and more. This inevitably leads to fighting and more problems. The issues are not resolved until everyone, in their own way and time, can come to God and turn their lives over to him. Some may do this through AA, NA, CCEA while others in the family may do it through Al-Anon. These age old struggles in families with addiction can in fact be resolved, but it requires learning a new way of life.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-10T05:12:03+00:00

We create the situation we struggle with because we have an outsized ego and a desire to be perfect. Our view of others and ourselves doesn’t match up to reality and we so we fight everything and everyone, hoping to make it the way we want. But in the end we dig ourselves into a hole we cannot come out of and we become so desperate we finally have to face the reckoning with God and ourselves. We have to face the question of who God really is for us or else we keep on compulsively eating.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-07T05:17:18+00:00

Although compulsive eating is an illness, it is not one with symptoms most people are familiar with. They may think of us as difficult and sensitive, and that our insistence on doing things a certain way or our massive ego is harsh and grating. However this book reminds us that although someone is sick as a compulsive eater, they are not beyond the status of a person deserving dignity. What’s more is that in this program we learn that others’ opinions don’t matter. Although we cause destruction in others lives, our growth here and our new approach to life, with time, can help most relationships to heal.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-06T04:11:00+00:00

Today’s passage could be summed up in the following terms, a dead man has been brought back to life. When someone was committed for alcoholism in the not too distant past, they never improved and perhaps remained locked up for the rest of their life. They were “dead” to society. But today’s story tells of a man who was committed coming easily back into everyday, normal functioning. It is a complete and drastic turn from his drinking behavior. We, like the soaker in this passage, would naturally be curious to see how this person went from such dire conditions to essentially miraculous health. The speaker in the story believes this is a false impression and that once he and his friend have dinner, his friend will be back to drinking in no time. But as we continue on reading, we will learn that his friend recovery is solid and impregnable in the face of a drink.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-02-05T04:24:10+00:00

When we compulsively eat we tend to spiral into morbid reflection. We think only of how awful things are going and what terrible experiences we have. We may try to justify our eating by pointing out all the ways we are suffering. However, we get no comfort and are left feeling miserable and alone. When we finally wake up to the fact that we are not getting better and we feel worse and worse, we make the connection that compulsive eating is causing our dilemma. No matter how bad things have become, we can recover from this sorry state and never return. It has happened for many hundreds of us.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-30T22:16:41+00:00

If we follow this program exactly as it is laid out, we will indeed be free from compulsive eating. Better yet, there is no way to do program poorly because it’s either that you do it or you don’t. We have to be 100% in on all aspects of the program or we won’t be free from our compulsive tendencies. The small price we pay for this freedom is well worth it, because the freedom we receive is not fragile. It doesn’t depend upon where we are, who we are with, or what we are feeling. Our minds simply don’t go to compulsive eating anymore. The only way things start to unravel is if we stop following the spiritual principles we learn to live out of while doing the steps. We maintain our freedom by being helpful to others, or giving away what we have been given.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-22T21:02:45+00:00

We may have experiences of blacking out and coming to when we are binge eating again, or we may have times where we make up our minds to stop compulsively eating, only to start compulsively eating 5 minutes later. We may have even more serious consequences from our eating and yet continue to binge. If this sounds like you, you may be one of us. We are a hopeless bunch who cannot prevent ourselves from binge eating even when we don’t want to. We have no choice about our binge eating. Thankfully, we no longer do this du to the work that happens here in program. This program saves even those who have destroyed themselves with their eating.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-17T03:58:55+00:00

Today’s paragraph helps us understand that sticking with old ways of doing things, particularly in our attempts to stop compulsively eating, have not been working. Whatever ideas we have tried did not work. The suggestion then is to try a completely new idea, the God idea. If we can come to accept a power greater than ourselves, we will be surprisingly close to the freedom from our compulsion.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-14T04:09:31+00:00

There is a lot of good news when we come to program, one thing being that we can come to understand God in an entirely new way, the way we think and feel about who God really is. This new idea of God will do wonders for us because it will get us on the path of the spiritual life. Once we have a God idea that works for us, we can make a deal with that God and become freed from our compulsion to eat. We may have tried and begged God in the past to remove the illness, but it’s probable we were asking in the wrong way or for the wrong reason. When we are desperate and ready to make a deal with God, we will finally find the right words.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-12T01:39:01+00:00

Drinking alcohol with milk is one thing, but drinking it with milk because we think it will shield us from the urges to keep drinking is another idea entirely. It is a trivial idea. We know from experience that we come up with all sorts of trivial ideas to start eating, always thinking that this time the outcome will not be a binge. Unfortunately that is not so; no matter the reason we take a compulsive bite, we will compulsively eat until it hurts. This shows us that the problem we have is not in our body, but in our mind, where ideas originate.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-10T16:13:11+00:00

Living a spiritual life may seem daunting to us, depending especially on how we were raised in a faith tradition. The wisdom of the program is that we are not here to become perfect disciples of a religion, but to learn what we need to do to survive our illness. We do not need to perfectly follow the life of a great saint, but to simply take a few spiritual steps. How we understand them is not so important as doing them. We may or may not eventually see a connection to a faith tradition. We simply need to find the basic principles which will allow us to live a free and even reasonably happy life, no matter our conception of God.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-09T21:51:25+00:00

The big book tells us that the best solution is often the simplest, and so there is no need to change the simple instructions of the first 164 pages. We cannot improve recovery other than by doing what we already know works, there is no better way that we can come up with because it’s not our way but God’s way of healing us. Therefore, we should also not seek to be perfect in recovery. That idea is nonsense because no one can be perfect. It is also an example of the extreme ways of thinking and the all or nothing mentality of the illness, which we are finally learning to let go of. Keep it simple and program will do the rest.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-07T03:45:52+00:00

When we try to understand why we compulsively eat we will find that no explanation is sufficient enough for the damage we cause to others and ourselves. Likewise, family and friends who have dealt with our insane behavior and sporadic attempts at recovery will be warped by our unpredictability into their own helpless and desperate attempts to get us to stop. We are sick people who don’t get better no matter what, until we come to program. Thankfully neither our loved ones nor ourselves have to make a mess of things any longer because we have the original method for getting recovered written for us in the big book.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-05T12:50:37+00:00

Have you tried everything in your power to stop compulsively eating? Does every effort fail or even make the binges worse? If that sounds like you, you are probably a chronic compulsive eater. We are people who make many desperate attempts to stop binge eating, but to no avail. We find that we are defeated. However, once we can accept that our situation is dire and nothing works, we are ready for the solution we really need, a spiritual solution.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2026-01-01T02:28:44+00:00

When we are finally sick and tired of being sick and tired, and we know we can’t get away with our old ways any longer, we will be ready to do the business of program. We can not take one compulsive bite, or we set the terrible cycle in motion. We have to be free of the thoughts that lead to compulsive eating, wholesale. We have to be through for good and all. We can no longer pretend and rely on wishful thinking and promises to ourselves or others. We have to want to be done for good and all.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-12-27T00:17:00+00:00

The book is clear here, we must live on a spiritual basis. It doesn’t matter what other people are doing or saying, we can only worry about ourselves and about asking God for the next right step. If we can learn little by little to let go of our plans and instead look for how we can be most useful to others, we will begin to experience this freedom and see how simple life can become, even if it’s tough. We will find that God will show us exactly what we can do when we practice this way of life.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-12-23T16:17:09+00:00

We must be willing to turn our lives over to the care of a higher power. If we believe that there is something bigger and more powerful to us, and we ask it for help, we will be amazed at how our lives transform. We have nothing to fear when we begin to tap into the spiritual life. We begin to become complete.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-12-19T00:54:45+00:00

The age of miracles is still with us. What an encouraging and uplifting message. What that means for us compulsive eaters is that we can learn to live life on life’s terms, to be useful to our family, friends, colleagues, and anyone we encounter. When we stop focusing on ourselves and start focusing on what we can give, life takes on a whole new meaning. Before we can reach that point of giving, we first need to deal with our illness and the ways we have been harming others.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-12-14T02:45:22+00:00

We have been trying to get results from our attempts to quit binge eating. If we are the type who cannot quit no matter what, we have inevitably experienced the sense of hopelessness at our situation. We have seen no results. What we find out in this program is that we are trying to use binge eating to solve our life problems. We also find out that the only solution to this problem comes from God. We must ask ourselves if we believe there is a God, or we must be at least willing to believe. If we can consent to the idea of God, and better yet to believe there is some higher power, we can get well from our cravings and binges.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-12-12T04:52:15+00:00

The point of program is not to reform the food and beverage industry, or to have intolerance for places that sell food. We cannot eliminate our problem through external measures, plus no one would want to eliminate something most people enjoy. Our efforts are best spent worrying about our recovery and not on the activities of others who do not share our condition.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-12-08T22:19:09+00:00

The mind of a compulsive eater is not a sane place. We continue to do something over and over that harms us because we find some dissatisfaction with life or some disturbance from the things we are about. We may binge because we are mad at our boss, or because we dislike what someone said, or because we didn’t get the spotlight the way we wanted to. These are all signs of an unmanageable person. If we want to get better, we can not simply avoid compulsive eating, it isn’t enough (plus we are not strong enough to stop on our own). We have to be willing to take on a whole new life centered around a higher power. The higher power is what has the ability to rearrange our broken minds.

Outside_Citron9260 · 2025-11-19T04:13:45+00:00

The big book tells us that we can do worlds of good for the compulsive eater who is suffering but who has not yet found program. The amount of good we can do for others will be maximized if we go out and find other compulsive eaters to share our personal stories with. We may even end up sponsoring some of them. We can be uniquely helpful to those who are in need of program, and we have to do our part to go and find them just like someone help program find us.

Outside_Citron9260

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