My nonna cooks and I eat what I can — we manage

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

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

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

Coming back after a wedding weekend to say it was fine, that I ate what I wanted, and that nobody said a word.

I have nothing to add and I did not want to leave it unanswered.

I found the guides here on this more useful than anything else, because they treat it as a social problem rather than a nutritional one.

My experience is that this got easier in month eight and has been unremarkable since. It is genuinely a phase for most people.

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

Something practical: I look at the menu before I go, always, because deciding at a table with eight people is where I get it wrong.

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.