Contest update, and fill update

Click contest:
I have heard from 2 of the contest winners. I am still waiting to hear from KernieC, and if SparklyJules wants to be a winner, I have stuff for you too. The other two should receive their Click stuff sometime next week.

My update:
I saw my surgeon yesterday, Dr P. I haven't seen him in over a year, since I've been seeing the PA. But the PA changed his office hours, so he's not there anymore on the only day of the week I can definitely make appointments, Thursdays. I saw Dr. P, and was shocked that he remembered me, that my band was done elsewhere, and that I was an anesthesia grad student. He still reminds me of the actor Philip C. Hoffman. We talked for a while about what's going on with my band, I updated him on the empty band-refill situation, and let him know that my weight has been stable for the most part since then. He asked if I wanted a fill, and I was honest about where I am. The fill level I have provides good restriction most of the time. It could possibly help me more if I had a little more fill, but I thought the majority of the problem was mental. This made him laugh; he said he's never heard a patient tell him that, usually it's him telling the patient. But it doesn't really help me not to look at my situation honestly. I've had 30-plus years to develop my eating habits and mental craziness around food. I know that I eat when I am no longer hungry, even now. That is by far the hardest thing to overcome.

But still, I have never been overfilled, have had extremely rare heartburn, no vomiting or "PB's", ever. We decided to go ahead with a small fill. He accessed the band, found I actually had 3.1 instead of 3.0 cc, and gave me another 0.5cc (which is actually a pretty big fill at this point) to a total of 3.6cc in a 4cc band. He told me to come back in a month to 6 weeks for follow-up.

This time, instead of following my old "liquids-only" instructions after a fill, I ate a small dinner. My husband made a curried mahi-mahi risotto and I had about 3/4 c. of that and was full. What are other surgeons saying about diet after fills these days? It seems like the old recommendation to have only liquids for 24 hours has gone away now, but I don't really know. Neither my surgeon nor the PA have ever given specific instructions for eating after a fill. In Portland, they started out saying liquids for 24 hours after a fill, then went to "take it easy", whatever that means. I'm wondering: is this no longer the general recommendation? Either way, it wasn't a problem. The fill seems pretty good. I just have to stop eating way earlier than I usually want to.

There's no getting around it. I like to eat. It's not easy to stop after a small amount when the food tastes good and I feel like eating it, even if I am "satisfied" or even "full." I used to be able to do it, when I was an early post-op and jazzed about the whole weight-loss thing (and still getting the positive reinforcement of constant weight loss). Now it's been close to 3 years, and that motivation has waned, and I don't see much weight loss anymore. I do hope to see some weight loss now, but it's going to be much more dependent on my mindset than on my restriction.