Carla M.

This story has been recorded at an Addictive Eaters Anonymous meeting in New Zealand, you can email us at contact@AEAnz.org
Hi, everyone. My name is Carla and I am an addictive eater. Yeah, it‘s good to be here. Very grateful. Very grateful. Yeah, it's a story of what it was like and what happened and what it's like now. I‘m very grateful that I'm here to tell that story. And I'm here, because all I did was keep coming. Keep coming back to these meetings. Came here because I was overweight, and had been overweight my whole entire life. And I thought that that was the problem. I thought that the weight was the problem. I really didn't think...I really honestly didn't think there was anything else wrong with me; that I was perfect in every way other than the fact that I was overweight. I think I would say I was delusional but yeah, no self awareness, no self awareness of how self centered I was. And how. Yeah, just just .... Controlling and manipulative. So I was grateful to come here and find a solution, actually so the weight... it's interesting now, looking back, I can definitely see that I had a problem with food before I ever started so to get overweight. But the first person who talked to me about this fellowship, she said that as far back as she can remember, she was fascinated by food, and I just completely 100% got that. I'm watching someone in my family really get worse, get worse with this disease. And that's really hard. It's really hard because it just it just reminds me of how all consuming and how sad and how hard it is. And how there‘s absolutely, there was absolutely nothing I could do. I was completely powerless. And there's actually nothing that I can do for this person. And yeah, and just being reminded, like you know, finding tonnes of like.... empty tines in the bedroom, just tuna and fruit and just empty tins. And I remember that. I remember looking around for something to eat and going ‘oh yeah I'll just have a whole tin of peaches or a whole tin of...‘ I can't even remember I can't ever remember eating tuna. But I remember the fruit. I remember tins of peaches and pears and and no thought for anybody else like no thought for that actually, somebody might want that or somebody in the family might want that. Yeah, that I didn't care... that just it just never even went through my head. I was just remembering ...today. And I was just remembering this. The priest had been asked to come over for dinner. This was when we were living overseas and
he was coming over for dinner and my mom had made make this - and I don‘t know why I liked it so much - I would have been about 11 or 12 - she'd made this tomato and onion salad with lots of vinegar dressing on it. And it was sitting on the middle of the table waiting for the priest to arrive here and lunch hadn't started yet. And I started eating it just with my hands just straight out of the salad bowl. Well, I ate half the salad. And so then when we came to sit at the table, my mom was so embarrassed, she was so embarrassed at the fact that there was like barely enough salad for the priest, let alone anybody else, you know, because, and I just and I would never own up to that, I would never say that it was me and I would never apologize for that.
I remember buying a vanilla flavored yogurt thinking it was like the vanilla back - and that you know how the vanilla yogurt, the Meadow Fresh like the vanilla yogurt was like, was like vanilla creamy. And it was sweet. And I got this vanilla yogurt, we all got to choose one yogurt, me and my sisters all got to choose one yoghurt. And it turned out that it wasn't that sort of sweet vanilla. It was just like a vanilla flavor. And I hated it. It was horrible. It's not what I had in mind, I had in mind a pudding. And this was not in my mind a pudding, it was hideous. And so I ate mine. And then I just ate my sister's chocolate one. I just ate it. I didn't even think that. And then she went to go and get her one. And it wasn't there. And I was like, ‘Well, no, because my one wasn't actually so...‘ like, in my head, I could justify the lying that stealing. You know, I could just that was just what I did. And, yeah, and the weight, the weight, the weight, the weight that constant like, I know, that's what I'm gonna put on weight, I don‘t want to put on weight... that embarrassed the embarrassment of having to like, get the different size in uniforms from my employers and having to, you know, just go up and up and up in sizes of clothes, and then just not ever having anything to wear. And just, but just not being able to do anything about it. I know it stopped me doing things that I loved, I loved to dance, I love to dance. And it just did stop me doing those things. But then I also but then, at some point it didn't either at some point, I would do those things anyway. And I remember in particularly the year  before I came into the fellowship, got very heavily involved in a dance group. And we would do performances and and I would be up there and I'd be dancing, my mom made me made me a skirt to wear. She after I came here and lost weight she actually turned that skirt into two skirts because it was that big (laughter). And I remember doing this performance at the town hall at the Auckland Town Hall. And this woman coming up to me afterwards and saying, ‘Oh, you did so well. That was amazing. That was incredible. Well done.‘ And all I could hear all I could hear, even if she didn't say all I could hear was ‘You did really well for a fat person.‘ That's what I heard. That was what was in my head. And that was my thinking constantly. And yeah, and it just got worse. It just got worse. And so you know, now when I see this happening, it just I ... people are getting angry that it's happening, understandably. And, and I'm just this, there's no anger, because I just I know, I know that it's a disease. I know that I'm bodily and mentally different from my fellows. And that I I was powerless, I was completely powerless over food. There‘s a solution here, and I'm so grateful. These 12 steps have saved my life and given me a life that I could not have even beginned to hope for. I had a friend sent me a message today she's on holiday with her partner. And she said ‘You've been married a long time.‘ ‘Yes, one day at a time.‘ ‘How do you do it? You know when you're on holiday, but we're just fighting all the time.‘ And and I thought, ‘I don't know. I don't know what I do.‘ And then I thought ‘Actually I do!‘ And I was able to share my experience. And my experience comes from everybody here. My sponsors and the people in this fellowship that have helped me to stay married, you know, I suggested, actually suggested she let her partner drive. And that it was okay if there was silence - that you didn't have to entertain each other the whole time,
that you lower your expectations that everything's gonna be perfect. And even if it's not fine, it's fine. And like, none of those, none of those are my original thoughts. But all of those are the things that I had to do... that all the things that I have had to do. And, you know, and I can remember, I can remember when, you know, there‘s been, there‘s been, these big fights, and there's been horrible holidays, like just awful holidays. And I really thought that there was nope for my husband and I, that I was gonna have to come back. And it was, especially one particular trip to the Gold Coast. And I thought ‘oh
definitely coming home to getting a divorce. And yet, you know, like, it just passes, it just passes. And then another friend who is off sick from work, and,
you know, she's worried because you know, the statements haven't gone out, and she's not going to get through it... and blah blah blah and she's at home sick worrying about work. And just to be able to say to her, ‘nobody dies.‘ She hasn't got a job where people are going to die from her not doing the job. You know, and just knowing that that's what I've heard, whenever I've been worrying about something, that you know, and just being able to share my experience. And again, it's not, it's not a theory, this this program, these 12 steps, they're not a theory, this is the way I live my life. And all I do is share my experience with others. And yeah, I'm very grateful, very grateful to still be married. I'm very grateful that you know, you know that I can be an example to anybody who's, you know, going through it. And, gosh, I really, really don't know that I don't get to... I don't get to say, who gets well from this disease. Or who gets to hear the message. I don't. I just show up. Come to these meetings. I answer the phone when the phone rings, I share my experience. I carry the message as much as I can through service. You know this is my primary purpose. Yeah, it comes first. And it's good. It's really good. Yeah. I‘ll just share, I‘ve been sharing...I‘m a bit distracted with life at the moment. And things are going to happen. I've had a few exciting things happen in the last few weeks. And I actually need this program and these 12 steps as much for exciting things as I do for hard things, because I like, I just go a little bit spinny - like my head go a little bit spinny, and my feet don't quite feel like they‘re on I'm grounded. Like I just don't feel like I'm quite right. And I can be thinking about things coming up. And I can be thinking about you know, things that have happened and it's just I'm so sick of myself at the moment. I'm just I'm sick of it. But um Jack‘s moving - he's leaving Christchurch, on Boxing Day, which is, which, you know, I think ‘that's okay, okay I‘m happy for him to go.‘ But I do know that that's exactly 16 and a half weeks away. And that's like, oh my gosh, really, really? I'm gonna be thinking about this but like so you're halfway. It's the funny thing is, I remember and I don't think it was 16 weeks but I remember sitting in a Friday night meeting, working out that it was 12 weeks until he was due. And sitting there and I'm going, oh my gosh, my baby's due in 12 weeks. That's only 12 more Fridays. And I was thinking, maybe I should start thinking about getting some baby clothes. And afterwards, I talked to my sponsor, and she said, ‘oh yes maybe you should start thinking about getting some baby clothes.‘ And yeah, he turns 21, the week before he goes, and, gosh, it's just, it's just a joy. It's just a joy to be a Mum. And it's just a joy to, like... be a pretty crappy parent, and, you know, I was just complaining to Clark I was saying ‘I think I‘m quite neglectful‘ and he said, ‘I think the boys like that.‘ You know, like, it's just that it's just this thing that happens out there. And, and I, and I don't know, I think I don't think my boys know how grateful they have to be to this program for the way that their mother is. But I do. I know that I'm a better mum, I know that I'm a better wife, and daughter and sister and friend, because of these 12 steps and this way of life. And because I come and I sit in these rooms and I listen to all of you. Try and work those steps to the best of my ability. Every day. Practicing a lot at the moment, just saying, ‘Thy will, not mine be done.‘ Like that‘s the, you know, whatever is happening, and whatever that distraction and whatever it's something I mean, it does focus me more and more on these 12 steps. Been really grateful recently to be able to work these steps around resentments, you know, just some major resentments, and learning to meet the people that I have a resentment against in that moment, and that if I meet them in that moment, and not thinking about what has happened in the past and not thinking about what's happening in the future. But it's actually just lovely. Like, it's just lovely, and these 12 steps work, and I think I might just leave it there. Thank you very much.