The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving

• Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day. Based on breathing rates (which triple during competition), blood pressure (which elevates) and muscle contractions before, during and after major tournaments, Sapolsky suggests that grandmasters’ stress responses to chess are on par with what elite athletes experience.
• Grandmasters in competition are subjected to a constant torrent of mental stress. That stress, in turn, causes their heart rates to increase, which, in turn, forces their bodies to produce more energy to, in turn, produce more oxygen.
• A brain operating on less sleep, even by just one hour, Kasimdzhanov notes, requires more energy to stay awake during the chess game.
• But not one of these grandmasters has perfected his fitness routine like the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen.
• There’s more: Carlsen chews gum during games to try to increase brain function without losing energy; he taps his legs rhythmically to keep his brain and body alert between moves.
• Carlsen claims that many chess players crane their necks too far forward, which can lead to a 30 percent loss of lung capacity