By Leobert Julian A. de la Peña
Philippine national team members Hidilyn Diaz (weightlifting) and Nesthy Petecio (boxing) shared their struggles in keeping their quarantine diet consistent amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both Olympic hopefuls are set to join in different qualification tournaments but the pandemic halted their respective campaigns.
During the Food and Nutrition in a Time of Pandemic Webinar hosted by the Philippine Olympic Committee, moderated by former Olympic swimmer Akiko Thomson-Guevarra, Diaz expressed her hardships in keeping her diet consistent.
“Talagang pagkain lang iniisip natin lalo na stressed tayo. Nasa 4 corners of our house lang tayo so dapat alam natin ano ‘yung tamang pagkain,” said Diaz.
Currently training in Malaysia, Diaz also added that it is also a struggle to find quality food supply, especially that the lines in the supermarkets are longer than the usual. For convenience, they had to resort to online food shopping.
For Petecio, due to her more flexible meal plan, she ended up eating whatever is available on the table making it hard for her to keep track of her weight.
Petecio does regularly monitor her weight making sure she doesn’t go 3 kilos over her fighting weight to avoid disqualification.
