Eating Out

How do you handle eating out? In particular, when eating out with more than just close family?

Unless I'm having one of my good days, I'm pretty much guaranteed to not finish my meal due to getting anxiety and gas buildup with the first few bites. I can even recall a few times I was dining alone while traveling on business, and pretty much having to leave my partially eaten, very expensive meal since the restaurant didn't have bathrooms connected to the main dining area. Of course, they assumed I was finished and cleared off my table since my bathroom trips are usually 5-10 minutes.

While in Las Vegas, I just had to eat at the Wicked Spoon buffet at the Cosmopolitan after hearing about how good it was. I tried a new tactic by quietly telling the server that I would cross my fork and knife into an 'x' when I was done with the meal (I was dining alone, to make more sense of the scenario). It worked well and I got some sympathy from the server. Since then, I've thought about crafting up small business cards explaining my situation that I can hand out whenever I go out to eat (and with a similar sign like crossing the knife and fork into an X).

Actually something that usually works well when alone is having a coat with you and leaving it on your chair when you go so hopefully they realize you are coming back (and haven't accidentally left your coat). Hard to do in the summer though. I have the same problem as you. I can't always eat a whole meal in peace, especially around dinner time. One trick you could try while with others is to have a drink and eat a little bit of appetizer, excuse yourself to go, and take care of business. Hopefully that will be enough to make it through the main dinner. Don't forget to pray that you will be able to use a stall.