Life Was A Big Secret
Addictive Eaters Anonymous
Robyn S
Hello. The speaker has been recorded at a meeting of addictive eating anonymous. For more information visit our website www.aenfo.org. Thank you, Leonie. My name is Robin and I am an addictive eater. I am in the hot seat without lipstick. But just to let you know, I did put my red door perfume on and I had a wee laugh when I did that because I do that before a Zoom meeting. And I suddenly realised who can smell it, Robin. We're on a Zoom meeting. But anyway, yes, my name is Robin. Like I said, and I am an addictive eater. And I haven't given too much thought about what was going to happen. But it is so good to have a label. That's all I can say about that. I came in here like most people did that do because, you know, I had this problem with food. I couldn't stop eating. And for me, there was the weight. And I thought I was going to die because I'd eaten so much. One night that my heart was racing that much that I thought I was going to die. I wanted to out of the hell that I was in in my head. But I certainly didn't want to die. But I didn't know what else to do. But that didn't actually stop me from getting up the next morning when all that had passed. And I had that slither of cake that making the kids lunch. And I had that piece of cake which started me again. It's Friday night. And I don't have to sit and think it's Friday night. Let's see what we can eat. And you know, I learned the word binge when I came in here. I'd never use that sort of word. It was just what could I eat. And so I think Friday night would have been a really good binge night. Basically the whole weekend. Monday would be weight watches. It's so good to go to a Monday night meeting. And I don't have those scales in front of me hoping that I can lose at least 50 grams. Because I knew what I'd done in the weekend, but I hadn't told anybody. I don't know how many times I went to weight watches. The local little weight watches, I often think of Kay when she talks about going to a kilo club and making out that she had, you know, jogged all the way or biked all the way. And I thought at the times that I used to go from Edendale to Wyndham to do that and for the way in and you know everybody the year and you know what they're thinking. And it just, just hearing people share their experience just brings it all back. And I need to be at meetings to hear that. I need to be reminded of what it was like because it's not like that today. You know, I hopped in my car and I came to my meeting. And I left my little house that I've got that I never ever thought I would ever have. We lived down south before we moved to Christchurch and many, many years ago, the thought of buying a house was the furthest thing from my mind. I thought that will never ever happen. I could never see a spy in a house. I got married young. I had children young, two boys, and I married a man that drank. And I married, well, no, yes, I married a man that drank. I found out later. And life was just like step one says it was unmanageable, totally, totally unmanageable. And I tried to control and fix everything and that didn't work. So when it was once suggested about buying a house and back then a house in Edendale, quarter acre section, a good solid three-bedroom brick home would have been 17,000 dollars. And there was no way, no way, I couldn't see that. I thought there's no way I might ever be able to afford to buy a house. So that life then was still very much a big secret to what I did with the food. And the longer I've been around and the more meetings I come to, the more I see what my life was like, how much I lived within my head, how much I didn't share any of my secrets about eating. Just recently, somebody passed coming into about somewhere. I was somewhere, it could have been possibly at work that, you know, how they ate the biscuits and hid them. And I said I used to get the mellow puff packet and I'd eat the rose at the front. And then I'd turn them around so that when my kids looked and they covered, they thought they went to open because there was the ones at the front, but the ones at the back, it all gone. And that's what I used to do. Used to buy 16 litres of ice cream and have it in the freezer and it was goody-goody gumdrop and that's full of lollies. And I used to go out with a teaspoon just backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Might as well have got a plate full of it and sat down and ate it. But no, I couldn't do that because that meant that I was eating it. And today, the insanity, I see that insanity. It's like the chocolate buttons and I bought for, to make Easter eggs for them. You know, I'd get out and get a handful just in and out of the freezer and the biscuits instead of sitting down with the packet or the tin or the carton or girl guide biscuits. No, just get up and down, up and down. But I never saw anything wrong in that. I really didn't and of course hiding biscuits from a dog that I didn't want the dog to see that I was eating them. So I'd shove them up my sleeve and go up to the bedroom, leave the dog in the kitchen. So, you know, these things I have learned through coming here, through coming and listening and other people sharing their experience. So my first meeting that I came to because life had got totally unmanageable and I didn't know what to do anymore. I couldn't diet anymore. I had given that up. The last diet was a herbal diet. I couldn't. I couldn't wait till tea time to actually physically eat anything. I rang up my sister-in-law and I said to her, "I can't do this anymore." We'd moved up to Christchurch and that, to me, was like what they call a geographical and hoping that things would be better because life was not good. It was not good. My boys were at high school and life was just becoming the absolute pits. But we moved up here to a city that I hated. I didn't want to live in Christchurch either. I had done it when Mark was born. That couldn't handle it. So we moved back down south. But anyway, we moved up with the thought and it was my decision to move. Alan was already working up here and his boss had run me out one night and I'd seen no straight away. But by the end of the conversation, I said, "Yes, we would move." So we did move. But for the first three months, it was just she-how, really. The disease in me, which I learned I had a disease when I came in, just got worse. And life certainly became worse. And the insanity in my head, I couldn't die it. I didn't stop eating. And so the weight came on. I was drinking. I had given up my love for smoking. I stopped smoking years before I came in. I tried thinking it was the coffee, the tea, and the milo. So I gave all them up. Just thinking that that was the problem. And the problem really was stemmed from my mother because she brought us up on milk puddings and farm cooking. And I heard somebody say that one day and I thought, "That's it. It was Mum's fault." So, but you know, I mean, she never actually forced me to sit down and eat it. But so when I couldn't do any more dieting and life had become really, really the pits, I saw an ad in the paper about a 12-step fellowship program. And I asked about it and I was told, "I think you'll find it's religious." Well, that was the no-no for me because I was very anti-religion. Anybody mentioned God to me and I would actually give them my verbal opinion of it. And it was never nice. And so I carried on my merry way of eating. But a few weeks, I think it was later, I read it again in the newspaper and it was like a neon sign. So I did what was requested back then and that was writer, Lita. And I did that and I had someone ring me. She shared some of her story on the phone and then she told me she was going away on holiday for a couple of weeks and I said, "I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I'll wait until you come back." And she gave me the phone number of someone else. And I had to ring that number within that two weeks. And it took a lot of ringing before somebody answered me. And then I had this woman come around and she came and she shared her story, which I know today is, you know, 12 step. Yeah, I asked a few questions. I don't think, I think I can remember there was something said about it being a spiritual program, but I didn't ask what they actually meant because I was the type of person that I made out. I knew everything and I knew absolutely nothing. So anyway, she was thin. I wasn't. And as we were walking out, she told me she didn't have to eat. I won't repeat what I said or thought, no, what I thought because I thought they don't eat. The love of my life is I was presently in food and he died. And now you're talking I don't eat. So anyway, it did not stop me off from coming. She, you know, suggested that I come to a meeting. So she came and picked me up for my first meeting, which was a Wednesday night meeting back then. And Kay was there and she was sitting where Leonia is tonight in the chair. And she had this book on her lap, which is the big book. And there were the steps in that, but I saw none of that. I did see the book, the people that were there, just she'd their experience. And I just sat there and thought, I found, I felt hope when I left that meeting. I felt that there was people here that were thinking and doing the same as I did. And I never shared it with anyone. And yet they were different. There was something about them. So I came back to my next meeting, the same thing. So I kept coming to meetings and eventually I started to hear what I needed to hear. And that was if I want to get well, I need to do certain things. And that was the steps. And I needed to believe in a high pair. And that was that word, God. But then I heard that was a God of my understanding. And I thought, well, I don't understand that. So, but eventually I came for about, I think it might have been, you know, around six weeks. And it was around this time, actually, of the year that it was sometime in June that I came. And I remember I was eating like three meals a day. I was just coming to meetings and I was just listening. And I remember my husband, who's now ex-husband, pointing that finger at me and saying, "A waste of time, you're going to those meetings." Because I was obviously eating again and seeing it all. You'd seen all the diets and all everything crazy that I had tried to, to lose weight. Because, you know, if I lost weight, I'd be better. But that didn't stop me from coming. And then eventually one, and I know it was a Thursday night, because I'd sort of thought this, that if I ring up and ask for help, get what was called a food plan, then I would have the weekend to do it. Because, you know, I had to go to work on Monday. And I knew that once I'd stopped eating, I was going to go crazy. Because I'd stopped drinking coffee. And I had about two weeks of headaches and wondered what was wrong with me. And it took me a while to realize it would be the, the lack of 15 cups of coffee in your body. It was only greeks and it was black. And so, anyway, on the Thursday night, I rang someone up and asked her if she would help me. So that's when I started. I got a copy of the big book. I heard that suggested that I read that and I did. And it didn't matter that it said alcohol in there, there was just something in that book that I could just relate to, particularly the stories in the back. But also, I read it from the front to the back. Not from the front and a little bit of the back, because that's what I used to do. I always wanted to find out what was the ending of this story like. So I didn't do that this time. And so, that was really the beginning when I started on this food plan. And I was told it was only for today, 24 hours. You just got to do it for today, rather than I was told. And I thought that was good, because if somebody had said to me, "You can't have an ice cream for the rest of your life, Robin." I don't know what my reaction really would have been. My thought today is that I couldn't have handled that, because I loved sweets. I loved anything to do with sweets. I read once that being a Toryan, you could eat your sweets first before your meals. I did that quite some time. You know, I'd see whatever was sweet. You know, I'd dessert first, but I'd still have dessert after the main. And so that didn't really work. But I believed those were things, because it fitted into what I wanted it to fit into more food. So I came, and eventually I heard that the steps were there. And eventually, eventually I was out walking the stop that we had, and I had the big book with me and I was out in the park, and I read that part. And it's in the promises. I know that today, but I didn't know it. The end that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. And I remember saying out loud, "Yes." Because I went from one day of pigging out and eating, and feeling crazy to the next day, and that the day in particular, I wasn't as crazy, but I wasn't eating. And it had been like removed, and I couldn't believe it. So I kept coming, and I keep coming to this day. And I love it when Kay used to say, "Golly, I need these meetings." And I'd sit there and think, "No, I'd say, 'God, I need these meetings.'" That's how I would think, but I totally agree with her. And the longer I've been around, the more I realize how important they are. Because it's the only way that I have learned how to live my life today. I have learned how to do things today, and how to say things, and how to be nice, and not say what I'm thinking. Because sometimes lately, if I see what I was thinking, I think I would be probably fired. And probably I'm not a very nice person sometimes in my mind. But I've only learned that through coming here. And I've only learned it by wanting to learn it. And that was the other thing. It was being willing to open my mind enough to believe that there is a higher power out there, that there is something bigger than me out there, and that I can change my attitude. I can change my way of life. And I can change my thinking if I really want to. And I want to. I wanted to be a better person. I wanted to be not the one that walked in the room and my children when they were at school. Their friends were there, and I'd come home from work. And they would leave because it would be just the look on my face. And I used to think, 'Why don't they do that with Alan? Why don't they do that with their father?' Because he would go in smiley face and happy and talk to them. And you know, I wouldn't. Because I'd be watching Telly in the middle of the afternoon. And I would rip open the curtains and say, 'How dare you shut the sun out?' And these friends would be there. So do you blame them? No. So you know, these sort of things have all happened to me. And it's nothing to do with me picking out, basically. I just find, I've been gardening today. I've done some gardening today. Now, I sat in the meeting one day and heard another member say, 'Yeah, she feels close to God.' And she was talking all about the stuff with her hands and the soil. And I will not tell you what I thought. Because I just thought, 'Oh, well.' But it is like that today. I find peace and quiet. I talk to the plants. And you know, they don't talk back. So that's quite good because you get no argument out of them. But these things, I'm not totally obsessive with my cleaning anymore. You probably could find a cobweb in my house, which is pretty amazing. I don't clean my toilet, shame every day before I go to work. Which I used to, absolutely obsessed with those sort of things. So you know, there's so many things have changed. And a lot of them have changed. They've just changed. They've just, they've just happened. I haven't got up every morning and think, 'I'm not going to do this today.' Oh, there was a time when I did have to ring my sponsor and say to her that I realised I was doing this. And she said, 'It's like picking up the first one, Robin.' So it was like part of my food plan that I wasn't to do it. And it would be like picking up the first one. And that worked, that worked. So I never actually covered being having a sponsor, but I do have a sponsor today and have all the time I've been in here because I couldn't do this on my own. I can't do it on my own. And I didn't particularly like that idea of doing some of those steps, four and five in particular or five. Because it was certainly not the things that I was going to talk about. I made those amends for all those things that I stole from the last place that I worked at before we moved to Christchurch. Monetary things, I could have gone to jail because I worked for a government department. But they were very good, very good, and wished me well in my new life. So, you know, all those things that I haven't wanted to do, I've had to do because I know that if I don't do them, I will eat again. So just by coming here and then just, as I said, I was driving out tonight and I, you know, look at my little house and I think I've got a house that I never ever thought I would own. When I was married, we bought a house and then I wasn't married and I bought the house off him and which I never thought I'd be able to do. And so now I have a different little house and I've got a roof over my head. And I'm still working in a job that I've been in for a house over 30 years. And I was there this morning because we've got a new site and they were blessing this new site because the building starts on Monday to build more units for our elderly citizens of Christchurch. So I went along to that and very open-minded with that. It was eight o'clock in the morning and it was a wee bit frosty. So it was kept very short, which was fine. And some of their residents from the village where I work, they came, which I thought was very good. And there's one of them that she really, really used to annoy me. She really did and I have found lately and I just realized it this morning. I can't change her and I'll never be able to change her. And all she wants to do is be helpful. And she got up out of bed this morning and she came just at the back of her, it was. And she was willing to do the dishes and do whatever. And I thought, Robin, it's not about you. And I look at people differently today. And I think I've heard Leo only say many times, everybody is just trying to do the best that they can. And I think that's all that this person is. And so I believe that that's all God. It's God gives me these ideas in the middle of the night when I know I should be sleeping. But it's also that I'm showing these things when I'm ready to see them. And I believe that today. So that's enough pressure to offer me. And it's just lovely to be here and I'll keep coming because I know this program works if we work at it and just do is what's suggested. Thank you. (coughing) (mumbles) [BLANK_AUDIO]