This speaker has been recorded at an online meeting of Addictive Eaters Anonymous. You can email us at contact@AEAinfo.org
Karen, can you please unmute yourself and share with us please? 
Thank you, Claire. Good evening everyone. My name is Karen and I am an addictive eater. Yeah, I am very much an addictive eater. My story starts really from from being a child. I truly do believe now that I've had this this illness all my life. From a very early age. I was obsessed with food. I remember going to a to a friend's birthday parties and we're all my friends were up dancing playing around... I just stood at the table consuming copious amounts of egg sandwiches because they were my favorite. And I was probably five, five at that time five or six. I was very popular at school. I've got still got some ...have not got much from my childhood with me, but I still got some school reports. And I was looking at them the other night actually. And it just says, you know, Karen is a friendly member of class, but she talks too much. That hasn't really changed. But what it should have said was she eats too much as well. My grandma worked in a tobacconist, so I always had ready available as many sweets and I don't like to call them goodies but they're not goodies but sweets, chocolate bars crisps biscuits, which my nan bless her used to let us have free reign of taking. And sometimes mine would make them into school. But most of the time I was squirrel them away up into my bedroom and just sit in bed and and eat one chocolate bar after another after another. So on the face of it, it looked as if I had a really blessed life, I come come from a loving family. My mom and dad a younger brother. Mealtimes were always provided for us. My parents were postwar children. So it was that usual, you had to eat everything on your plate because of the starving children in Africa. If not. Always had to ask to leave the table. But for me, it's what went on in the shadows. And looking back on it with hindsight being such a great gift. I lived half my life in the shadows. The bit that everyone saw was Karen at school or at work fairly confident, quite popular with other people seemed to have her act together. But in the shadows, that was a completely different, different version of me. I could be quiet, lonely, quite isolated. I always remember saying to my ex husband, I would go and sleep in a shop doorway if I thought I could be happy. Nothing ever seemed to fill me both with happiness or food. Nothing was ever enough or anyone ever seemed to do or what I did. Just kept me feeling restless and as it says in the big book and discontented. I can totally see it now. And I did try. I knew there was something not quite right with me and food but couldn't quite figure it out. My I share this alot my grandma God bless her used to say ‘oh our Karen no, she loves her phone. She's big boned.‘ My bones are the same size as everybody else's. But that seemed to be a good excuse that it was okay. I had a healthy appetite. But I didn't. I wasn't bullied at school. I don't remember being bullied at school. But I was always the tabby kid in class. Always. And I remember at nine my mother had terrible trouble finding clothes to fit me because I'm quite short. So everything that did fit fit me was way way too long. And she had to pay for a dressmaker to take trousers up. When I left school, age 17 I got a job in London. Quite a good job working in in the just along The Strand. And I remember coming out of that interview telling myself that I was going to stop this, this eating this going to the supermarket buying special food to binge was going to stop and that's when I was 17. And it didn't. If anything, it got progressively worse. I managed to control my eating when when I was pregnant. Because I knew that the clinicians were going to be taken a special interest in me with my weight and blood sugar levels. And for nine months I ate what would be deemed to be as a normal person. But then when my daughter was born, I had a difficult delivery and I found being a parent quite difficult. The illness came back and it came back with a vengeance. I found myself I'd moved up into the north of England by then found myself with a, a 10 pound baby - God bless her - 10 pound, really hungry, really demanding, stuck in the house all day on my own, with no support. And it was easy just to put her in the pram and wheel her out because every time I wheeled her out, rain or shine, she'd go to sleep. And then I used to go to the local co-op and buy anything, didn't it didn't even matter. This is the madness of it. If I if I enjoyed it, I liked it, and a newspaper and go and sit with my daughter who was asleep by then in the local crematorium, which had the most beautiful gardens and just sit there, find a quiet little corner and sit and eat. And it was easy because I could throw the rubbish in the bin and no one would see it. And scurry home again. But inwardly I was really miserable. I wasn't happy with myself, I couldn't look in the mirror. I didn't like who I become. And this still continued up until 2020 when COVID hit. And things really took a hold then. Because I couldn't get out to get food. I was classed as a vulnerable person and shouldn't have gone out unless it's extremely necessary. I was living with a friend at the time. And they went and got to the grocery shopping for us. But I couldn't ask them to go and get my little stash of stuff that I wanted to consume every day. So I started ordering things on Amazon. Yeah, I was nothing but resourceful. And nothing but sly and devious. And the Amazon parcels would come and my flatmate would ask ‘what for more shopping? what have you bought now?‘ and I‘d just fob him off with some excuse. And all day, I would sit there thinking that that night that parcel, that box was in my wardrobe. And we used to go to our separate rooms at nine o'clock. And I would get the box of stuff out and just sit on the bed and munch and eat away. And then when he went for a walk the next morning scurry to someone else's bin on the floor below me to get rid of all the wrappers. So no one knew. And that was that was the cycle of my life. And we all split up and I ended up living in London on my own. And I knew then, and this is some... yeah, well I knew then that if I didn't take action, and address what was going on... that this this disease was going to do one or two things, I would either just sit there and just consume food all the time. Or I'd end up taking my own life because life was grim. I didn't like who I was life was really miserable. And I've always supported people throughout my life in my career. So I'd heard of, of, of BEAT. The charity BEAT, went on their website and found a listing for AEA and rang a member who graciously called me back, we had a little chat, and invited me along to the meeting. As we are here tonight. I didn't show up for the first one, it was a second second time that I came along. And I didn't want to put my camera on because I didn't want people to see me. Because I obviously wore my disease. I didn't want to see myself on the screen. But I was encouraged just to put my camera on and sit and listen to the similarities of people's stories to see if anything, I think resonated with me. And I couldn't believe it. Because it did you know there was these people in these little boxes on this screen telling their story, which sounded in some circumstances really similar to mine. But they had a lightness about them. They had a a, an air about them. And I joke, ‘There's no halos over the head... But it was kind of like that!‘ There was a peace within them that I could see in their eyes. And I wanted that. I wanted to feel that whatever that was. So I'm nothing but curious. It must have driven people mad looking back at it kept staying behind and getting phone numbers and started ringing people and listening to their story and the solution that worked for them. And my plans were my plans were that I had a big birthday in 2020. And I was going to wait and surrender after that big birthday because I was going to go for lunch. So we go for lunch at the Savoy and afternoon tea at the Ritz. That was my plan for this big birthday. All around food again. And nine days I think it was before my birthday. I went to visit a friend and we had a lovely day and we went fa lovely light lunch because that's what I did in front of people had a normal light lunch and got off the tube. Went in  Marks and Spencers bought a great big bag of rubbish and went home and sat on my bed and ate it. And it's after coming to these meetings for months.
And I was broken. I was absolutely devastated. I was broken. By then I'd asked someone to be my sponsor, and they kindly said they would. And the next morning, I was in such a panic. And I couldn't get to speak to my sponsor, and I rang another member and just said down the phone, ‘I'm done. I'm done. Just tell me what I need to eat.‘ They were very kind and they did. And I surrendered. I just couldn't do it anymore. I was tired, I was tired I akin it to be in a hamster on a wheel all those years. All those years just going round and round chasing something and not getting anywhere tired exhausted. And life started to change very slowly, very gradually for me the food was removed straight away. But what I have learned since coming into recovery the food was just the tip of the iceberg. I I was the problem my thinking was the problem. And the peace of mind that I have today I don't for me food... I eat what‘s on my food plan. Do the dishes thats it done and dusted. Food has no call to me at all these days doesn't speak to me at all. But for me more importantly the peace of mind that I have that I can actually put my head on the pillow at night and sleep. And I kind of like myself now, you know and every day is not rainbows, rainbows and unicorns, life still throws a crabby day. But I feel I can cope with it more these days and especially don't eat on it. I stay in contact regular contact with my sponsor, share things with them hand over my thinking because my thinking for the last donkey's years never got me anywhere where I needed to be. For me this is the only thing that's worked. I have I've always meditated since the age of 17. And for me my higher power is like plugging myself in the mains. I'm like an electric car. So today I did feel a bit drained at two o'clock and I just sat there and had five minutes with my higher power, just tapping in asking them to take all my worries, my thoughts away and just grounded myself again in that moment. So I could be of service to the people that I was seeing this afternoon. So for me now, you know life has completely changed since coming into recovery. I moved from London I now live in beautiful Somerset. Ideally, it's a beautiful part of the country. Life is a lot quieter for me, but it's richer, richer in so many other ways. And I'm just so grateful that I found this fellowship and the love that was here because I know that I'm not on my own I know that I'm guided and cared for by my higher power. I know that you know I speak to my sponsor and I can ring any other member and just share with them the crazy madness that still goes on in my head as and when that whack a mole as I started calling them Whack A Mole thoughts come up. There's a lot of laughter. There's a lot of peace and a lot of joy in my life these days. And I'm just so grateful for being here. So I'm gonna leave it there, Claire and thank you for asking me to share. Thank you.