burning 6000 calories a day from playing chess?

[clydeashelton]

Is there any truth to this?

I won't link the website because I might be spam filtered but this is what it says:

"According to Robert Sapolsky, Stanford professor of neurology and neurosurgery, a grandmaster chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories per day. True to his word, some elite chess players have stated that they have lost some pounds after participating in a chess tournament."

"The game requires you to focus and read your opponent’s moves. In some cases, this can be very stressful and may lead to increased breathing and heart rates thereby burning calories in the process."

[Strawng]

Nope. It burns less than light walking: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18987876/

Sapolsky certainly knows more than a few things about the brain, but he needs to stay in his lane when it comes to other aspects of physiology.

[clydeashelton]

Ok Dr Strawn of Physiology... jk

[Kiffy200]

Don't get me wrong I get a little hotter if im playing chess and concentrating and I've seen this quote a while back. I mean watch them play and they don't break a sweat, if your body was burning through 6000 calories I'd expect at least a fair amount of sweat. As for the losing a couple of lb I'd of thought that could easily be down to water loss. I've watch a lot of games and quote often they will drink very little.

Brain burns around 320 calories a day, there's no way chess players burn through nearly 20x that.

[SuffolkPunch]

Maybe if you had full sized knights, bishops and castles to move...

[Slamt]

https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id...-playing-chess


Yes. If you get stressed out enough and your heart starts working then calories get burnt..


But that’s the 2nd rated player in the world playing for the worlds championship playing for god knows how many hours

For the regular person, probably not

[Pterodactyl314]

I was sweating my ass each game off my last over the board tournament. Idk how they got the 6k figure unless they’re talking about the most extreme of games 10+ hours.

[TolerantLactose]

When I went to school, I would use to lose an average 5lbs each exam month. I thought it was due to energy required to study and take tests but it could just be stress and deceased food intake. Or a combination.

[oneuser]

I must learn chess now.