If you have success with losing weight, it’ll be very evident on the scale early on. If you’ve been eating poorly and not exercising for years, once you start, if you keep at it, you’ll definitely lose weight–and for a little while, rapidly.

There’ll be other changes too. Your clothes may start fitting more loosely, for instance, and you may have to tighten your belt a notch or more. But later, the changes that are visible to you will come more slowly.

For instance, when I weighed 265 pounds, it was pretty rapid for me to get down to 230, then 220 pounds–all of that happened within a year. I lost a pants size and a half. It was pretty quick.

Then it got hard. It took me years to get down to 200, and maybe a year at the 200 range before I finally got markedly lower than that. Now I’m between 183 and 186 at just about all times. I’m trying to get below there–technically I am still in the overweight category–but it’s very difficult.

However, other changes happen. Looking at myself in the mirror, I know that I’m still losing fat. I can see ribs and veins I’ve not seen before. On my bike ride today I noticed some veins in my legs that I’ve not seen before–definite indications that I’m continuing to lose body fat. And just last week I ordered a couple of pairs of pants with a size 36 waist–most of my pants are 38s that I need a belt with–and not only did they fit, they were a bit loose.

While I’m still looking at that scale just about every day, it’s far from the only indicator I have of how my plan is going. Weight is really not all of that great of an indicator of health in general, but it’s a fast way to do measure yourself. That said, all the other changes you see in yourself–and the ones others see and point out to you!–are at least as important, and as time goes by and it’s harder to actually lose pounds, they’ll become even more important.