How I ordered at a Nigerian family celebration

What I would say to somebody dreading a big meal is that it will almost certainly be less noticed than you fear.

Ambrose, answering your question directly rather than going round the houses.

The business dinner was the last thing I got comfortable with, and what solved it was simply doing three of them.

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.

Somebody in this circle said the meal is not a test, and I repeated that to myself in a car park before a work dinner and it worked.

What I got wrong was over-explaining. The more I said, the more interested people became. A short answer ends it.

Reading this properly rather than skimming, which is all I have to offer today.

Gently disagreeing with Kate, or rather adding the other half of it.

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.

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

I found the anticipation harder than the event, every time, which is a pattern I now recognise across most of this.

My partner orders something we can share when he senses it is a difficult evening, without ever making it a thing, and it is quietly brilliant.

The wine question comes up in this circle a lot and mine changed considerably, and having something else in the glass removed the discussion.

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

Nkosi, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Something that helped was going out at lunchtime instead of the evening, because my appetite is much more reliable earlier in the day.

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.

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.