Feeling full, but boy has my head been hungry

I've been following my medical team’s advice to eat more solid food instead of the cottage cheese I've been consuming. I switched my lunch to a meat and cheese roll-up. One serving of deli meat is 2 ounces, which is 2 slices, the way this meat is cut. I layer 1 slice of meat, 1 slice of cheese (lower-fat provolone), 1 slide of meat, 1 slice of cheese. I roll it up and microwave for a minute or so. I eat it by slicing off little pinwheels, less than 1/4-inch wide and chew the heck out of it. The meat-cheese combo makes a filling lunch; in fact I couldn't finish mine today. OK, the piece was about an eighth of an inch wide, but I still couldn't fit it in.

While my stomach has been filled, however, my head has been playing crazy games. It kept telling me that I was hungry, and sometimes I ate even though I was full. And I paid for that with a dash to the bathroom. It even happened to me a few times at work last week.

I think the hunger is tied to some anxiety I’ve been going through. We’re trying to adopt a dog and the process includes a home visit. I’m not much of a housekeeper, and became even less so after my husband’s stroke, so we had a lot of work last week to get our condo ready.

While the front rooms of the condo are in reasonable shape, my bedroom was a disaster zone. I found a kitchen trash bag worth of lost socks under my bed, and almost as many wash cloths and towels. I filled a 20-20-20-inch box with books from the bedroom floor, plus a large storage bin, and I still have many left. My library bookstore will get a BIG donation soon. I had stacks of stuff that I hadn’t gone through in ages, and hauled out 6 garbage bags of trash. We had 8 paper shopping bags worth of clothes for Goodwill, and that doesn’t include the ones that were just too crappy to give away. I found a coffeemaker I forgot I had. This experience has saved me having my life profiled on “Hoarders.”

The effect of this cleaning has been to clear my head. For the first time in years, I can enter my bedroom without stepping on books and dancing around piles. My head feels clearer, and my lunch filled me up today.

We don’t know yet if we’re getting the dog, but there will be plenty of room for her.

See you next time.