By Caleb Whisenant
For most people who are in good health, daily tasks like getting out of bed and going to the kitchen in the morning to make breakfast or walking from the front porch to the driveway and getting into a vehicle are afterthoughts – trips measured in seconds and rarely given a second thought.
For Josh Greenway, there was a time when these afterthoughts could take upward of half an hour and consume all the energy his body had managed to store during the night. He would walk a little, perhaps stop periodically to catch his breath, walk a little farther, stop again and eventually make it to his truck. Today, making that same trip without stopping is something Greenway considers a victory.
It is one of the “small wins” he has learned to celebrate as he works to reclaim a life that, not long ago, he feared was slipping away.
The Alderson native and social media content creator began documenting his wellness journey after stepping on a scale in May 2025 and being shocked that the number climbed to 715 pounds before displaying an error message.
He knew he had gained back much of the weight he had lost years earlier. He did not realize how much. “When it said error, it devastated me,” Greenway said. “I said, ‘It changes today. It starts right now.’”
Since then, Greenway has lost about 200 pounds in a little more than a year, while chronicling the process for tens of thousands of followers across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
His stated weight goal is 250 pounds. That means Greenway is working toward losing roughly 465 pounds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization use body mass index, rather than a single “ideal” weight, to define a healthy adult weight range. But as a point of perspective, three people weighing 155 pounds each would collectively weigh 435 pounds. For Greenway, the numbers tell only part of the story. Shedding the weight of three people is, for Greenway, a journey about embracing life.
“The whole journey isn’t about becoming a number. It’s not about changing a number on a scale,” he said. “It’s about getting the life back.”
Greenway says he has been a bigger person for most of his life. He remembers becoming noticeably larger than other children in elementary school. But being bigger did not necessarily mean being inactive.
As a young man, he worked as a tour guide at Organ Cave and played in the marching band at Greenbrier East High School. After high school, however, his weight began to increase more substantially. A move to Indianapolis in 2002 marked the beginning of a period in which the weight continued to accumulate.
After returning to Greenbrier County in 2011, Greenway estimates he weighed somewhere between 550 and 600 pounds.
In 2014, he attempted to lose weight on his own. He lost about 100 pounds, dropping from an estimated 650 pounds to roughly 550, but eventually lost his motivation and regained the weight.
Then, in 2019, Greenway’s father died.
His grief resulted in depression and anxiety. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, staying home became easier to justify.
“I didn’t get out,” he said. “I had a reason to stay home and hide from everyone, from life. And my anxiety compounded my willingness to ignore my own wellbeing.”
By 2025, however, Greenway said his anxiety had become severe enough that he was experiencing anxiety attacks nearly every night. He began seeing a therapist and started treatment for depression and anxiety.
He also learned about GLP-1 medications, the catalyst for his wellness journey that provided him what he needed to fuel his wellness journey.
But Greenway emphasizes that medication was never, in his view, the answer by itself.
“A GLP-1 is not a solution,” he said. “It is a tool.”
The medication, he said, helped make the process easier by reducing hunger and helping regulate other factors, but it did not eliminate the work required.
“You still have to put in every ounce of work that you would put in if you weren’t taking it,” he said.
For Greenway, that work has included counting calories, weighing food and paying attention to everything he consumes, even the small samples of food he tastes while cooking.
Greenway also acknowledges and emphasizes each person’s unique experience on their own wellness journey. He has deliberately avoided prescribing one particular diet to his followers.
He does not tell people they need to follow a ketogenic, carnivore or vegan diet. Instead, he said, he is trying to develop eating habits he can sustain for the rest of his life. “I’m trying to build healthy habits to last a lifetime,” he said.
Greenway is motivated to share that lifetime lifestyle with others. A month after beginning his journey, Greenway created a TikTok account and began sharing it publicly.
His original goal was modest.
“There has to be somebody out there that’s in my situation,” he remembers thinking. “If I can reach just one person and make a difference in their life to show them that you can come back from however far you think you’ve gone, that you’re not too far gone, then my mission is a success.”
The audience grew.
Today, Greenway has more than 55,000 total followers across his social media platforms.
More importantly for Greenway, the messages began and have continued arriving.
People told him they had started their own wellness journeys because of his example. Some returned weeks or months later to report that they had lost 40 pounds or more. Others sent photographs documenting their progress.
“I would’ve never thought that a 715-pound man could inspire people to lose weight,” Greenway said.
Those messages have become one of the principal reasons he continues.
The other is accountability.
Knowing that thousands of people expect to see him post each week makes it harder to retreat into the isolation that once crippled him.
“If that number goes up on the scales, I’m going to have to answer for it,” he said. “I’m going to have to own it.”
The support has surprised him.
Greenway expected social media to bring a barrage of cruelty. Instead, he said, the overwhelming majority of the response has been positive. Even when someone posts something hateful, Greenway said, other followers frequently defend him before he even has the chance to respond in the comments.
His family has also become part of the transformation.
Before posting publicly, Greenway sat down with his wife and discussed what might come with exposing their lives to strangers online. They agreed that if social media ever negatively affected her, he would quit.
He also makes sure she approves anything involving her before posting it.
Additionally, his mother has lost about 190 pounds, and his wife has lost about 100. Other relatives and friends have begun their own wellness journeys.
Greenway says he still has trouble believing he helped inspire them.
“I can’t believe that I inspired this many people,” he said.
The changes in his own life are becoming increasingly tangible.
A visit to the eye doctor recently brought an unexpected realization: He no longer had to worry about whether the examination chair would accommodate him.
A year earlier, he said, losing 50 pounds felt enormous. Now, having lost more than 200 pounds, ordinary activities are becoming easier.
At 715 pounds, Greenway said, his life had narrowed to a routine of working from home, sitting and eating meals and expecting death.
“I was basically waiting to die at 715,” he said.
Now he is thinking beyond the scale.
He wants to explore West Virginia, particularly the places that rarely make tourism lists. He envisions a YouTube series devoted to the state’s hidden gems, from covered bridges to lesser-known historical and natural sites.
One destination carries particular significance: Organ Cave, where he once worked.
Greenway believes he may now be able to walk the cave tour again. The challenge will be the stairs.
He remembers there being roughly 188 of them.
So he has an idea: Set a date, count down the days, return to the place where he once worked and see whether he can climb them.
It is another milestone, another small win.
And that, Greenway says, is the philosophy he hopes people take from his story, whether they are struggling with their weight or facing an entirely different challenge.
“You don’t get to 715 pounds overnight,” he said. “You’re not going to get back from 715 pounds overnight.”
Instead, he tells people to stack small victories.
For someone else, walking to their vehicle to leave their house without stopping might seem insignificant.
For Greenway, it represents how far he has come.
“You have to constantly work at it and stack those small wins,” he said. “And then six months down the road, those small wins have added up to something big.”
If you are interested in following Josh Greenway’s wellness journey, you can find him on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or YouTube by searching Less of Josh.
