Booked for March but I'm two stone heavier than I want to be. Do I postpone the facelift and lose it first, or just get on with it?

Right, new problem, and I feel slightly ridiculous raising it after all the agonising I did over technique.

I've got my date. SMAS lift, 10 March. And in the two weeks since booking I've become obsessed with the fact that I'm about two stone heavier than I was five years ago, and that most of it seems to have arrived in my face and neck. My daughter, who is tactful, says I look "softer". I look like a scone.

So which is it. Do I spend the next three months trying to shift it so he's operating on the face I actually want to keep, and risk turning up half-starved and stressed for surgery? Or do I have the lift, then lose the weight afterwards and enjoy the double effect? Part of me thinks losing it after is a bonus round. Part of me thinks I'm about to pay eight thousand pounds for a man to trim skin off a face that's about to shrink, which sounds mad when I type it out.

I asked the clinic and got "we recommend a stable weight", which is not an answer, it's a fortune cookie.

It's a fortune cookie but it's also the actual answer, they just didn't explain it. Stable is the operative word, not thin.

Think about what he's physically doing. He lifts the deeper layer, moves it, lays the skin back over the new shape and cuts off what's spare. How much is spare is judged against what's underneath ON THE DAY. If two stone leaves the building in June, the shape underneath has changed and the drape he tailored no longer fits it. That doesn't mean it collapses, it means it can end up looking emptier than he planned.

Which, and I say this gently, is not the same as looking younger. Ask me how I know.

Adding the awkward one that nobody mentions: losing a lot of weight can make your NECK look worse before anything looks better.

Mine did. A full neck is being held out from the inside by the fullness. Take the fullness away and if the skin has lost its bounce you find out what was underneath, and it isn't always a jawline, sometimes it's just loose skin with nothing to fill it. I lost weight the year before my consultations and genuinely thought I'd wrecked my neck. I hadn't, I'd just uncovered what was already there, and it changed what operation I ended up needing.

Which is really an argument for doing it in the other order, Vivienne. Lose it, then be examined, then book. Not lose it, then be operated on to a plan made before you lost it.

Vivienne, I'm going to answer this one from the wrong side of it, because I did exactly the thing you're contemplating and I'd like you to have my hindsight for free.

I lost about a stone in the year after my lift. Not deliberately at first, it just went, and I was completely unprepared for what it did to my face. My jaw got sharper, which I liked. My cheeks got emptier and my temples went slightly shadowed, which I did not. And here is the thing that took me months to understand: that was not my facelift failing. The lift held. What had changed was volume, not position, and those are two entirely different complaints that look identical in a mirror at eleven at night. I spent a whole autumn convinced my result was dropping when what had actually happened was that I'd lost fat out of my face along with everywhere else. A lift corrects sagging and drift. It does not put fullness back, and it never claimed to. I've written the whole thing out properly in facelift and weight loss.

So, the practical version of Rosemary's and Annelise's advice, which I think is right. If you genuinely intend to lose two stone, do it first and be stable at the new weight before he draws on your face, and ask to be re-examined afterwards rather than assuming the plan still stands. Annelise's point about the neck is the reason for the re-examination: what you need can change. If, honestly, the two stone is an aspiration you've had for five years and haven't shifted, then tell him that plainly and have the operation on the face you actually have. Surgeons can plan around a stable weight of any size. What they can't plan around is a face that's going to be different in six months.

And do tell him what you're planning either way, even if you're not sure you'll follow through. Mine didn't change a thing about the operation, but he did tell me what to expect if the weight came off, and I would have been so much calmer that autumn if I had listened.

Thank you all, and Paula especially, because the sentence about volume and position being two different complaints is now written on a sticky note on my fridge, which is admittedly an unusual place for it.

Decision: I'm keeping 10 March. Being honest with myself, the two stone has been an aspiration since 2020 and I am not going to shift it in nine weeks by any method I'd want to explain to an anaesthetist. I told him at the pre-op what you all said, he seemed pleased to be asked, and his line was that he'd rather operate on a stable scone than a moving target. His phrase, not mine, and I've decided to take it as a compliment.