If you're on a weight loss journey should you still go out to social settings where lots of food is or do you avoid social gatherings until you're

Why would you want to avoid going out???

Assuming you want to maintain your new weight, your diet needs to become your lifestyle rather than a short term thing... so you need willpower and determination to enable you to continue with your diet - the only way you're doing that is to put yourself in those challenging situations and make those healthy choices rather than falling back into your old ways.

If you stop going out, all you're doing is avoiding temptation rather than learning how to deal with those temptations and saying "No" to foods that you don't need to be eating. Do you avoid social gatherings for the rest of your life???

Go out and practice mindful eating.

I would think you would need to learn how to eat in all settings.

That would be a bit backward in my mind. If asked the question 'why are you losing weight?' most people would say they want to look and feel healthier and have a better quality of life wouldn't they? So it seems strange that they would avoid taking part in something that raises their quality of life whilst they are in pursuit of the same?
You can make healthy choices whilst still socialising, stick to your healthy eating plan as much as possible and also swap out alcohol for diet pop or choose something like vodka and diet Coke instead of wine or beer.

You should go and not eat

If I'm serious about any thing I'm going for, I would avoid anything that would put me at risk of not achieving my goal.

I don't go out a lot, but never turned down invites over trying to lose weight. I tried to make the best choices I could throughout the day and evening, take an extra walk, etc to offset if needed.

you should still go out but don't make food the center of attention

Absolutely! Go and have fun. Eat whatever is good for you, but don't overdo it. Sooner or later you will lose your weight then you will have to learn how to maintain it. Now is a good time to practice your new lifestyle.

If there's simply lots of food, I see no problem as long as you have strong self-discipline, however, I'm not sure about events that are mainly about food. It's kind of like going to wine testing when you don't drink alcohol.

Ofcourse you should go.

Eat whatever is good for you that's available there.

I don't think there's any connection between social settings and weight loss journey.

It's about control.