'She's going to have good arms!' I was ten years old and standing in my parents' bathroom when I heard my mother say this. She was in bed, making her morning round of phone calls to her friends. I don't know who she was imparting this vital information to, but in the world in which I grew up – as the child of rather glamorous parents, who liked to entertain friends at our house in south-west London – this boast was akin to my mother saying, 'She's going to be a brain surgeon!'.

Physical appearance took precedence over any other conceivable achievement. My arms are now 62 years old and suffering the normal skin laxity that comes with age. But also, like so many others, I have been taking the 'miracle' weight-loss drug Ozempic. The consequence of dropping two dress sizes in pretty short order can be clearly seen in the batwings – I hate that word – hanging from my upper arms.

Indeed, that's not the only part of my body to suffer: my skin is looser everywhere, but especially on my inner thighs, face and neck. When I bend over, my inner thighs remind me of ruched curtains. It was in December 2022 that I started taking Ozempic, injecting the 'pen' into my stomach once a week as instructed, and increasing the dose very slowly, from 0.25mg to 1mg, over several months. These were the early days of people taking the treatment and my friends gave me a hard time.

Fiona Golfar says her self-esteem has improved since the treatment. Fiona shows the pen marks Patrick Mallucci made prior to her Renuvion treatment. 'What about the side-effects?' they'd preach. What if I was to get thyroid cancer? (Animal studies have shown a connection between semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, and thyroid tumours.) What if I got hit by a bus? I thought. I've never regretted the tweakments I've had: I don't think they make me look ridiculous and I understand that others might prefer to leave well alone.

These things are not for everyone. And I have always been impulsive and tend to rush headlong into things. As Editor at Large for Vogue for 26 years, I also lived in a world that valued beauty almost as much as my mother did. I was lucky in that I had access to the latest treatments, including a tummy tuck in my 40s to correct the kangaroo pouch gained through stretched skin on my lower abdomen after having two babies.

When I left Vogue and headed into new waters at the age of 52, I treated myself to a lower face and neck lift, getting a very big discount because I wrote about it. The procedure still did not come cheap, but it gave me a huge confidence boost. But I have always struggled with my weight. My family has a genetic predisposition to be fat and for much of my life I have been a yo-yo dieter, moving up and down dress sizes.

I never weigh myself, but at my largest I was a size 14/16 and at my slimmest – and that was rare – I could be a size 10. When I started to take Ozempic it was life-changing. It silenced the 'food noise' in my head, meaning I no longer thought about food constantly, the way I used to. I was never obese, but it helped me lose the excess weight that had accumulated round the time of the menopause, establishing itself around my thighs, back, arms and legs. Thanks to Ozempic, that incipient middle-age spread is no more.

And, in my seventh decade, I am fitter than I have ever been. If you drop weight quickly on Ozempic, as I did, you can burn muscle as well as fat, so I created a rigorous exercise regime of weight training, swimming and Pilates to stop that happening. The mental benefits alone have been amazing. I am full of energy and zip. And yet... Although I couldn't be more thrilled about the lost pounds and the two dress sizes, I have been left with a horrid laxity of skin where the weight has gone.

On top of that, there is a marked difference in texture. My skin looks like scrunched up crepe paper – the fat combined with the youth that kept it smooth has gone. So, September last year saw me in the elegant, South Kensington clinic of renowned plastic surgeon Patrick Mallucci, who practices bespoke surgical and non-surgical treatments for precisely my kind of problem. As I held out my arms in the crucifixion pose, he cast his skilful eye over my puckered and pleated bits. I was embarrassed, but he made it easy and not shaming at all while, with a blue marker pen, he drew lines along my underarm skin and my inner thighs to show me where he felt he could make improvements.

Mr Mallucci told me he was seeing a marked increase in people looking for skin tightening treatments, precisely because of the new weight-loss drugs, while explaining everything available on the market. There's 'a whole spectrum of skin tightening approaches,' he said. At the bottom end lie the basic, over-the-counter treatments which are just trying to improve the overall quality of the skin, such as Environ Derma-Lac Lotion (£44.95). Combined with its Vitamin A, C & E Body Oil (£48, both from theskingym.co.uk), they are known as 'retinol for the body'.