Tasting menus and the moment I had to stop

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

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

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

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

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

Grateful you posted rather than kept it to yourself.

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

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

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

Something practical: I sit near the end of the table if I can, because it is much easier to be less observed there.

I had one genuinely bad evening early on where I felt unwell at the table, and having a plan for that now means I am not braced for it.

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

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

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

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.