The video starts with a title screen. A maroon and orange gradient aura shifts in the upper right corner of the screen as words appear. They read “UFC PI: Nutrition Advice to Stay Fueled in Quarantine” and appear over a short resume blurb. The blurb reads: “Clint Wattenberg: Director of Performance Nutrition, UFC Performance Institution.”

After a few seconds the words pan up the screen as a question fades in from below. The question reads: “What are some foods, nutrients, or supplements you have recommended during the pandemic?”

Clint Wattenberg:

Yeah. So each athlete's nutritional needs is obviously going to be quite varied, especially in a weight management sport where two athletes will be training together. And they have very, very different needs around not only training and recovery, but energy systems and weight making.

As Clint talks, words appear on the right side of the screen emphasizing his points. The text only serves to clarify what is being said and does not add any new information that isn’t already present in what Clint has to say.

Clint Wattenberg:

So what we really try to do is to create consistency, really having a protein backbone to our diet is critical to support muscle tissue repair, support, metabolic health, and to really again, to create some of the structure to a daily lifestyle.

And then we will flex and adjust different macronutrients to support the energy system needs at any given moment, depending on the training intensity, training volume, training load, as well as just overall metabolic health and recovery needs.

And so what we're doing is adjusting fats and carbohydrates based on each of the individual athlete's needs and providing a broad base and again, broad support of different micronutrients and fuel sources to provide and to fill the gaps between the meals and the other macronutrients that we're getting.

We also are very fortunate because of our partnership with Thorn to be able to support our athletes with supplementation that, again, we're not ever going to be trying to over supplement our way into a healthy diet, but when athletes are required to be in a calorie restrictive scenario, fulfilling some of our micronutrients can be really, really helpful using a variety of different products and multivitamins magnesium, curcumin, omega threes, and are really vital to our athletes maintaining a strong nutritional base, as well as just living.

Another question appears as text on screen reading: “What nutritional recommendations should the general public be considering?”

Clint Wattenberg:

In terms of food, maintaining a variety of nutrient sources is really important. Obviously we want to be as nutrient dense as possible. So some of the tried and trued outages of fueling with protein every three hours is really critical to our overall philosophy.

Color your plate, make sure you're getting a broad base of micronutrient sources, a variety of different protein sources as minimally processed as possible. And we really do lean on some supplementation to support the overall wellness of our athletes and for ourselves.

And I personally AM, I have never been more consistent with my supplement regimen than I have over this time, because hey, I was home for 12 weeks and sitting next to my bathroom sink and then sitting on my kitchen counter are the different products that I might be trying to have either in the morning or night or however I might have them.

But things that are critical to just overall wellness, I would suggest including a multivitamin of some sort. Make sure you're getting your probiotics either through food or through supplementation. Using spices in your cooking is always good to combat inflammation.

Things like cinnamon, curcumin, all of these things. Ginger. Any strong spice is going to have some anti-inflammatory benefits. And we use [inaudible 00:03:41]. Magnesium is a deficient mineral in most everybody's diet. So we use that a lot.

Things like vitamin D is critical for our immune function, for our aerobic development and capacity. So there's huge benefits to making sure you get out, get some sun and some exercise. Open up your lungs and keep them healthy as well as getting some vitamin D both through sun and development in our skin conversion, as well as potentially through our diet.

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