Teachers of New Jersey: George Peters, 6th Grade Science Teacher at Toms River East
I’ve been a teacher in Toms River for 30 years. And next year will be my 31st and probably my final year.
Way back when my wife had kids, I put on some sympathy weight when she was pregnant. I continued to put on weight until I got to be about 425 pounds. I was in bad health condition. I had to control diabetes and high blood pressure, and I went to the doctor, and I said to him, “What can I do to take care of this?” He looked at me and said, “If you don’t get this under control, you probably only have five years to live.” I was 45 at the time and that hit hard. It definitely brought me down. But it was like a big reality check. I quit eating the garbage that you shouldn’t be eating. But I wanted a completely different approach though, because I’m like, that’s not going to solve the problem. The problem is that I’m too big and I continue to put on weight. So, I went in, I met with a bariatric doctor, and I had a bariatric sleeve for weight loss. It’s a sleeve surgery where they remove half of your stomach, and I went from 425 pounds to 290.
After a couple of years, I still hadn’t been doing much activity. I was still eating the bad stuff because I was like, “Oh, I can do this.” But my weight went back to 310. I saw my blood sugar numbers slowly creep up again. It scared me to death about losing my life for something I could control. So, I finally decided to control it, and my daughter got me into running. She was on the cross-country team at High School East at the time and she said “Hey, why don’t we do a turkey trot on Thanksgiving?” And I was like, “I don’t know if I can run three miles.” So, I started running and I started to really like how it made me feel. I found it very therapeutic. When I run, I end up getting to a place in my mind where I can process things a lot better. And when I’m done, I might be completely soaked and tired and fatigued, but I feel good.
Since then, I have done triathlons, I have run the New York City Marathon four times, and I feel great. I tell my students, If I can do those things, you can do something like that too. And then I share something that I took from the triathlon world. The first Down Syndrome athlete to complete an Ironman is Chris Nikic. He and his dad have a training plan called 1% Better, where you just improve 1%. I show my kids that video of Chris Nikic, becoming an Ironman using 1% better. So, I tell my students, this works for everybody. You can use this for you if you’re not doing great right now. As long as you put in the work, you’re going to do 1% better, you’re going to see results, whether for sports, the classroom, or anything in life.
Interview by Gregory Andrus
Portraits of the Jersey Shore
