Small Steps towards Lasting Changes

Joni is an original client with Journey 2 Health and also the HR Director with our first corporate client. She shares with us the small yet consistent changes she made to reclaim her health and life after a pre-diabetic diagnosis.

Episode #19

I’ve learned to give myself grace and to tell myself it’s ok if I didn’t get everything done. Tomorrow is another day to start again…just put one foot in front of the other!

Joni Haltom is a wife of 24 years, a mother to 22 year old twin daughters and has served as HR Administrator at Harriss & Covington, a hosiery mill in High Point, NC for nearly 26 years.  Joni was one of the original coached clients in the Journey 2 health program that began serving corporate clients 5 years ago.

Joni is someone you want on your team because when she commits to something, she goes all in!  At EHOP Health we benefit greatly from her grit and determination as she leads the charge implementing the Journey 2 Health program within her role as the Human Resource Administrator at Harriss & Covington; our first corporate client.

Joni shares that while she had a solid foundation of knowing healthy behaviors and having parents who led her well, she found herself at the age of 50 in the “perfect storm”. She was battling weight gain, not exercising or eating well, heart burn, high blood pressure and an unexpected diagnosis of pre-diabetes. She had let herself go and knew she needed to get back on track.

Simultaneously, Journey 2 Health was being offered as the all-encompassing health coaching program at her company and she was ready to jump in! She made small, incremental steps towards reclaiming her health. She adopted the advice to “eat nothing white”, from our Eat Well pillars, gave up fast food for 9 months straight and began walking at work collecting 11,000+ steps each day. Little by little, she began to see improvements and felt better each day.

Over the course of that year in the coached program, she reversed her diagnosis of pre-diabetes and lowered her blood sugar by 23 points! She also no longer suffered with high blood pressure and she lost weight. Better yet, she had established a new lifestyle routine that she would commit to for the rest of her life. She also inspired her co-workers and organized 5K events for the company to build rapport, healthy habits and community as they all strived to live healthier, more active lives.

Since the first year of coaching, Joni has stayed the course and continued on this journey 2 her best health. This year she signed up again for coaching and improved her health even more by using a stand-up desk at work, alleviating chronic shoulder and neck pain as well as poor hip mobility and soreness! She’s a wonderful leader in the workplace and within her family, displaying grace and grit all at the same time!

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