Iftar with a changed appetite

Started 10 February 2026 · 17 replies · 136 hearts · read 1.7k times

OttiHarrogate, UK · 10 February 2026

5 months ago

A question rather than an update: Iftar with a changed appetite

The logistics of this are defeating me more than the medicine is.

I have worked out a system that mostly holds and there is one part of it that keeps failing, and I would like to hear how other people solved that part.

The thing I have not been able to find anywhere is how people manage this when the week has no fixed shape at all.

If anybody has an arrangement that works and is willing to write it out, I would be very grateful.

NolCork, IE

The work lunch is the hard one because you cannot leave and there is a social script. I now eat something small beforehand.

5me too 3

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

Facilitator note: this is a logistics thread rather than a clinical one, which is a relief, and I would still rather nobody offered instructions.

WystanCheltenham, UK

What helped was having one sentence ready. Mine is that I am not very hungry today, and nobody has ever pursued it.

AmbroseYork, UK

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

KateBelfast, NI

Wystan — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

I do not owe anybody an explanation and it took me a year to be able to say that at a table rather than only in my head.

TavitaApia, WS

What I found is that the waiter is the least of the problem. The people I am with are the ones who notice.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

A waiter once quietly boxed the rest of mine without being asked and said nothing at all, and I have never forgotten it.

OsgarKillarney, IE

Reading Tavita, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

My strategy is to order what I actually want and eat what I actually want and let the rest go, which took practice.

Bell ANorwich, UK

Coming back to what Nkosi wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

I ask for a box now without any embarrassment, which is a small thing that changed the whole experience of eating out.

DelphiThessaloniki, GR

#10

The buffet is the one I still find difficult, because there is no natural boundary and I have to make one up.

GwilymCaernarfon, UK

#11

What Bell A described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I found weddings hardest of all. A set menu, a long evening, and eleven people at a table who all know each other.

WinkleWeymouth, UK

#12

My honest experience is that most people are far less interested in what I am eating than I imagined for the first year.

GildaTrieste, IT

#13

The commentary from one particular relative was relentless and I eventually said, once, that I would rather not discuss it, and that was that.

9me too 7

OttiHarrogate, UK

#14

Something I got right was continuing to go out. I nearly stopped for six months and I am glad I did not.

NolCork, IE

#15

What I would say is that leaving food is allowed. I had a lifetime of not being allowed to and unlearning it took a year.

NoorFacilitatorSingapore

#16

I am going to redirect us back to the original poster, who has not had a chance to answer any of the questions put to them.

WystanCheltenham, UK

#17

My rule is that I go for the company. If I eat, good; if I do not, that is also fine, and reframing it that way fixed most of my anxiety.