Christmas dinner, year two

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

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.

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.

Thank you. Genuinely.

Starters as a main is the whole of my strategy and it has never once been remarked upon in about forty restaurants.

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.

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

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

Thank you for the update. Threads that stop are the worst kind.

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

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.

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

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

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.