> If your social and/or work life heavily depends on eating together it might be part of the "problem" of why you need to lose weight in the first place.

This! My last boss used to be a "bon-vivant" guy, meaning he would particularly enjoy a nice meal with the occasional wine to go with it (please note this is pretty common in France) [0].

Two years after joining his team, I had gained quite some weight. I figured I had to eat less somehow, but I never had the impression that I was overeating. I also didn't want to skip to those meals with him. So I tried a few things:

* Pace myself with the wine. We would usually split a bottle among us. I actually enjoy wine, but don't particularly enjoy being tipsy, especially when I have to work. So win-win-win (see below)

* If there was some fruit available have that instead of cake, or skip desert altogether. Drinking the wine slowly leaves me with "something to do" while the others have desert, so they don't feel any pressure to hurry up.

* Go for more "filling" meals, meaning I looked for dishes with a bunch of vegetables. This would keep me full longer and I'd be less hungry in the evening, so also eating less. Another bonus is that I'd feel /really/ full and actually not want desert.

What I've found is that even though in the beginning the others would comment on my not having desert, they actually stopped having it themselves after a little while. The wine never actually went away, but we would occasionally only have a glass instead of a whole bottle.

The point is that I think people may feel there's a certain expectation to have a lunch a certain way. And it may be true in the sense that "it's common, so people expect it". But if you don't fully conform to it there doesn't seem to be any issue, pretty much no one seems to care [1] (except maybe if you think that you have to adhere to the expectation).

All this being said, I do appreciate that for people who enjoy nice meals it can be difficult to choose those "restrictions", especially when they're right in front of you.

[0] There never was any pressure to go along, especially since he was the kind to actively avoid talking shop at lunch. But, as the team would go out with him, I would have missed out on getting to know them. I should note that I'm not particularly outgoing and rather focused on my job, so random chats during the day wasn't exactly something I'd spontaneously do.