Chess players burn a lot of calories at the highest levels of competitive chess tournaments. Chess players can burn up to 6,000 calories in a day by playing a tournament (three times what a normal person burns in a day). A study of 21-year-old grandmaster, Mikhail Antipov, found that he burned 560 calories in two hours—roughly what Roger Federer burns in one hour of playing tennis.
It makes sense that intellectually demanding tasks leads to feeling tired at the end of the day!
Read The Chess Grandmaster’s Diet from NPR.
See also: