Former lightweight world boxing champion Kellie Harrington was named in the Irish squad today for the Olympic qualifiers in London next month.
The Dublin native has recently recovered from a hand injury and will be hopeful of booking her ticket to Tokyo.
She returned to action in Bulgaria last month, losing to Finn Mira Potkonen in a multi-nations warm up.
Harrington has been detailing how she's overhauled her diet to scale the summit of the amateur sport.
It all starts with a good breakfast!
"I'd have breakfast like a king really, so I eat really big in the morning. I would have a bowl of porridge made with milk and berries and some kind of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in there. I'd also have two slices of toast with two boiled eggs, a glass of juice and a cup of tea. That will keep me going for about three hours. Come lunchtime, I would have a nice yoghurt. It depends on what way your days are planned out."
Kellie Harrington's diet has completely changed since she first stepped into the ring:
"I'm boxing fifteen years and my first national elite title would have been at 69 kilos. That was when I would have first moved out of my Mum and Dad's house. What I thought was a great dinner was frozen batter burgers, all that kind of stuff. Now I have a great nutritionist and I wouldn't be eating those frozen batter burgers anymore, that's for sure. Massive massive changes, instead of having real sugary foods in the morning, I'll have my porridge. You get your sugars from your fruits as well. Everything has changed. My diet has changed, especially with my weight having come down from 64 kilos down to 60 kilos, I've got to be watching what I am eating."
That doesn't mean temptation isn't out there!
"When you go to a competition and you are making weight, all we do is go on to Instagram, go on to Google and look at food pictures. You'd think that we'd never been fed in our lives. It is really hard. I don't know how I can put it. You know when you are growing up and you have a crush on someone and they don't have a crush on you and you always want what you can't have. And you just want it because they don't want you. It's the exact same with foods, when you can't have it you want it more!
Harrington hasn't thought about lining up behind the Irish flag in the Japanese capital this July:
"We get through London and please god we'll get out the right side, then we'll start worrying about Tokyo. They are two different kettles of fish. You are going to have only European female boxers in Europe and then in Tokyo, you are going to have a mixed variety. There's no point in worrying about Tokyo when I have to get over something much closer and probably much tougher.
Kellie Harrington was speaking at the National Dairy Council's 'Everything Starts with Milk' campaign.
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