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Comment by NetBeck | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of excess calories chess players burn when playing.

>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.[1]

[1] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste...

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Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's mentally exhausting, but I can't help but feel like pieces like these are intentionally trying to create hype for hype's sake. Just by basic understanding of how human metabolism works, these players would need to be eating an absurd amount, or losing an absurd amount of weight each tournament. That's nearly half of what a powerlifter eats each day. Not to mention that the sheer amount of heat your body would give off burning through that many calories. The only believable number given in that article is the claim that Russian grandmaster Mikhail Antipov burned 560 calories in 2 hours of intense chess, which doesn't even come close to scaling to the claimed 6000 calories/day figure given the amount of time these guys play every day during a tournament.

Indeed. The 6000 number has floated around for a while and is an exaggeration.

It is true that chess at the competitive level burns calories. (More like an extra 1000 a day during a tournament.) Coupled with tournaments not allowing food, players do lose weight over a few days! But like you said, the 6000 number is an exaggeration.

I read these articles and it's apparently because of high stress + breathing. Not because of using one's brain. :(

That doesn't mean they're unrelated though - maybe high stress and breathing are a necessary requirement of using your brain a lot.

Restricted shitty breathing, both chronic and short term, jack up your blood pressure, stress and cortisol levels, etc. Healthy athletes know how to breathe. Chess is no different. You can be a great chess player in spite of your terrible body mechanics, breathing patterns, etc. It doesn't mean it's "good" for you, and certainly doesn't mean it's unavoidable.

the same thing goes for physical labor. Exhaling is mechanically how you lose body fat. Breathing more isn't sustainable without creating demand, but if it were sustainable you could just breath faster to lose weight.

I don't think that's how you lose fat. You get rid of the exhaust generated during the chemical fat burning process. If you couldn't exhale you would still burn fat.

In: O2

Out: CO2

That extra C atom comes from your metabolism. If you're in a calorie deficit, it has to come from your C atom reserve storage.

You miss the point of the parent, which is that exhaling is not a chemical process. The point being that the CO2 you exhale is "somehow produced by something", and once it's there you have to exhale it.

That's a way of saying that breathing faster won't burn more fat just because of the breathing: burning fat is a bit more elaborate than that.

> That's a way of saying that breathing faster won't burn more fat just because of the breathing

Which is wrong, since breathing involves pumping air with your muscles.

Not sure if you got my point but wanted to be pedantic, or didn't get my point at all.

If you're in a calorie deficit, it has to come from your C atom reserve storage.

Yes, and that will be your muscle mass as well as body fat if you're not exercising and maintaining a decent protein intake.

As a science puzzle, would one feel hungrier sooner if one intentionally decided to breath faster for a few hours and kept at it?

Exhaling is how you lose fat, because you're sitting on your chair all day. That's the baseline. If you were actually doing sport you'd lose fat by breaking down ATP when repeatedly contracting your muscles.

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