Pamela C.

This speaker has been recorded at an online meeting of Addictive Eaters Anonymous. You can email us at contact@AEAinfo.org
So my name is Pamela and I am an addictive eater. I love the sobriety document. So why don't I give myself a bit of a chance by just rereading the last sentence, sobriety through sobriety members find peace of mind, the ability to live a meaningful and productive life, a meaningful and productive life. I am extremely grateful to this program. I love the freedom I found from me, and my thinking, I love the fact that the program has taught me that the food is just a symptom of something else that's wrong with me. And that the illness centers in the mind so that my difficulty is not actually with food. Food itself is a beautiful nutritional substance given to us by the creator of this world of this universe, in order to operate healthily and strongly and so food is not really a problem, because it's been created for all sentient beings to to eat and to live by. And Addictive Eaters Anonymous really has enabled me to see the insanity of trying to binge eat, not eat, overexercise, to cope with my problems, you know. I have been taught that the illness really manifests, the obsession starts within the head, in that I can wake up on any given day, certainly in addiction, and my head will tell me, ‘I am not enough, I am ugly, I am not worthy of being alive‘, that the universe made a mistake when it made me, everybody else is prettier than me, slimmer than me, taller than me, got more money than me, any of these obsessive narcissistic thoughts, drive me to the food. And I will eat in order to anaesthetise myself and feel better, which of course is insane, because, you know, the food has never enabled me to feel better. So today, I'm grateful that I now totally accept that my problem is not the food, that the food is like a scab on the surface of the skin, like having the measles and being so focused on the dry spots, that I totally miss the virus and the puss underneath the scabs. So, you know, when the food is in its place with a food plan, which I was given by another member in Addictive Eaters Anonymous, - my sponsor - when the food was in its place, and I started to eat well... What happens is all of that negative, narcissistic, it's all about me, thinking comes to the surface. And the 12 steps, the 12 traditions and the literature that we have today in the fellowship is what saved my life. You know, and I can laugh, I can laugh that today the food doesn't call to me. And that I'm free. Just free. It's an it's an amazing life. So today, here I am. I woke up this morning and my plan for the day was to have a lovely long walk by myself because the neighbor's dogs are away. And I thought I'd come back and do the weeding in the garden. And then I thought that this afternoon I might nip around to a neighbor of mine. She's invited me for a cup of tea. And do you know what? When I woke up and stood up
my intuitive spirit said ‘No, not today, Pamela. No walk today, you're too tired. And maybe just a little bit of weeding‘, you know, because the, once I stopped eating addictively, what happened to me was that I got to really find out what makes me operate. First of all, it was the fear and the embarrassment. And it was the low self esteem. And now I get to find out what makes me operate is that small, still voice that has enabled me to let go of the food. And so what I did instead today was I made myself available to other members. And I just potted around the garden because I was tired. We've had an excellent week, my husband and I, we went to an Alice Cooper concert at the weekend. And we and we were up till midnight. And then we went, we saw we went to the cinema and watched a film earlier on, midweek. And I'm just, you know, I've beginning I'm beginning to accept life on life's terms, with the fun, the fun of the cinema, and the fun of a heavy metal concert. I think that's the right heavy rock, hard rock, metal. This is my husband's choice of music. But I have to say that I did enjoy and I do enjoy. And I did recognize, you know, about five of those hits that were sang, and the show was incredible. So, and all of that without the food. Do you know, I never noticed the food. I never noticed the food. Did I at the cinema at the cinema? No, I didn't, notice the film stayed awake for two hours while I watched that. And at yeah, and at the concert, I got thirsty. And I went to the bar. And I said to the lady, ‘please can have two cups of water.‘ And the water was delicious. And what's even left me, I've even discovered that in sobriety, it's, I can actually attend a party, or a concert or a cinema without drinking anything. I've even lost the compulsion to want to be holding either a cup of tea, peppermint tea, chamomile tea, herbal tea, and I'm even losing the compulsion to be sipping water. But on Saturday, I was genuinely thirsty after a fish dinner. So and I noticed that. I noticed that the music was enough, the cinema was enough. The delight of watching other people's faces, and seeing my husband enjoy one of his favorite genres is just incredible. So, you know, that's what this program is about. For me, it's about life on life's terms, in between the food, forgetting the food, eating the food, loving the food, having nutritionious nutritional food, feeding the body, and then trusting God and life on life's terms in between. So it's been a marvelous week, and the week before that, we were on a caravan holiday. So I'm feeling really relaxed and spacious around the holiday, and around the two events that we had. And we have fun and call them date nights. Anytime that I get to spend time just with my husband. Most of you know my husband, he is here for the newcomers. He is here. I won't mention his name, because we're being recorded for the public. So I won't mention it just now. But we love you know, laughing and holding hands and enjoying date nights. We make sure we have them at least once a month. I said to him, ‘we should do it at least once every fortnight‘ just to remind myself and I'll even say the words ‘Okay, we're on holiday. Let's just pretend we're on holiday.‘ And it immediately makes me relax and not take my life so seriously. So this program is about returning to sanity and trusting the 12 steps, a sponsor and a God of my understanding, I love
sitting still with the God of my understanding and for the newer members we can call God divine intelligence, spirit of the universe, Angels of Light, whatever. I love, cultivating fertilizing, building a relationship with that God of my understanding, and totally abandoning myself to the program, and to God. And regularly reminding myself every day to relax, take it easy. Put food in its place, eat on time, eat only what I have discussed with my sponsor, and let go of all of my designs, my plans. And once I get used to that spiritual way of life, tapping into the power, relying on my intuitive spirit, and when I get any fantastic ideas, I absolutely run them past other members and just test my thinking very regularly, so that I'm not off beam, going a bit cuckoo. So life is good. I did notice, I did notice that for the past week I've had a half a bag of porridge on the dining room table. And I noticed that the expiry date was April 2021. And I noticed that the mind said ‘oh my goodness, this is very expensive porridge - it was when I was feeling extravagant and I didn't buy it from Lidl - do I really want to throw this away?‘ So I googled what birds or any animals that might eat porridge oats so I could put it in a compost or something. And I think it said ducks might like it but not to wet it or something. Anyway, I let go with a bag of oats. I put them in I put it in the compost with the weeding and let's just give it to the earth. So that's me today, folks.