My dog will only eat if I stand next to him

Like zahada said I would try and think what has triggered this to start with?? Could it be a noise has frightened him or he hurt himself in the kitchen??

Also if you haven't got the willpower to continue with the only leaving the food down for 20 mins and then take it up again, then how about slowly moving out of the room?
Each night you could get nearer and nearer the door until you are standing in the door way and then the hall.
If at any point he stops eating then just move one step closer but never right the way over to him. (A bit like getting a young child with sleeping problems getting use to the parent not being in the room).

It's a very time consuming way of getting him to eat but it should work if you do it right and have patience.

Why is it such an issue to stand in the kitchen for the probably no more than 5 mins that it takes the dog to eat its food?

Perhaps the dogs having a RMB like mine sometimes get that can take 1/2 hr to eat, then I can understand that it might be more problematic!! Then again in that situation I would consider giving a different RMB and keep the one that takes a long time to eat for when I want to sit out in the garden for a while.

If you want to sit in living room watching TV etc then why not feed him in there.

I am actually usually in the same area as my dogs when they eat, either washing up, tidying, preparing my food etc. Never thought about it before I saw this post. I guess I dont see it as an issue or chore to be with them and often enjoy watching them eat anyway. However my dogs have no issue if I was to walk out of the room and will continue eating.

Not saying you dont have a behavioral problem developing and that it needs addressing. All of the posts above give excellent ideas and advice for which I have nothing extra to add.

I perhaps see that you can easily adapt yourself to the problem you are having by doing some tidying / cleaning, preparing your own food etc (and so not wasting your time whatsoever) while the dog eats its food.

@princessleia29 Maybe you need to look at how you act while in the kitchen? Do you talk to him or watch over him? Or do you just get on with jobs like caz2golden mentioned?

If you have been fussing over him then that's the first step in making a change. Stop the fussing and just do the washing up etc.

Taking an idea from zahada about throwing kibble on the ground, you could throw kibble (his most favourite food) on the floor in the kitchen as you walk out the room, it will only work if he regards a certain food as the "best food EVER". If you have a food that he would do anything for then you could start with throwing it behind you in the lounge or the garden, some where were he will stop following you and start eating it. This breaks the cycle of him following you out the room.
Then when that works do it in the kitchen but always throw it behind you while walking away, this kind of reinforces that it's not a bad thing when you are walking away from him.

Don't know what has happened but the member seems to have vanished (no longer in the members list) along with her post(s)

Perhaps she crossed the boundaries and was exterminated? Or committed forum suicide?

Yes you can go in and delete all your posts, then delete yourself zahada . She couldn't delete her actual thread cause there were posts on it

Ha ha yes and pigs might fly too, I would be very surprised it they removed the dead wood, there are loads of members on here with zero posts, I see them very often, only the other day when I did my daily check for birthdays, there were 6 in the list all zero posters, needless to say, I didn't do any posts

Why join then not post ? After all you can read every post apart from looking at the photo thread. Unless they wanted to look at member profiles