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The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving
- rajacombinator 7y agoSounds like amphetamine abuse to me. Presumably de rigeur in chess.
- snazz 7y agoDid you read the article? It’s about diet, exercise, and the energy burnt playing chess.
- rajacombinator 7y agoDid you read between the lines? The article is indeed about those things, but they’re almost certainly BS.
- thanatropism 7y agoIt's well possible that Magnus and Anand and cohort are having the lifestyles of active sportsmen with nutritionists and physical trainers and all that good stuff, while amphetamins or at least Provigil is rampant among middling players breaking into the middle ranks. I've been in a 52-versus-one simultaneous (offline) game with a Champion (not a Grand Champion). I'm mediocre at chess, but can you imagine the kind of skills you need to beat 52 mediocre-to-interested-amateur players? At Magnus's level stimulants possibly no longer work -- much like amphetamines wouldn't help me pass a calculus exam; probably even set me back.
- serf 7y agoThe game is exhausting at those levels. Also, not to validate your presumption, but anecdotally I can say that amphetamine and nootropic use is pretty rampant within chess.
- aluminussoma 7y agoI track my vital metrics religiously. Last week, I interviewed at three companies who have intensive technical interviews (Dropbox, Google, Apple). The morning after the second interview, at Google which was intensive, I was my lowest weight ever in several years (dropped three to four pounds from five days before) I gained the weight back after a week. But it was interesting to observe the physiological effects from interviewing. I'm not surprised to read about such physiological effects from long, mentally intensive activities. (I thought I did well enough in my interviews but I didn't make it past the hiring committee at Google, or Dropbox)
- kensai 7y agoYou were probably forgetting to drink enough. Okkam’s razor.
- aluminussoma 7y agoI guarantee you I was hydrated. Maybe over hydrated. I went through about 12 fl oz of water an hour, maybe more (I brought my own water bottle).
- balfirevic 7y agoJust so you get an idea what those numbers imply: Let's say you had 5 interviews over the course of five days, each lasting 5 hours. You presumably lost 1800 grams (around 4 lbs) of fat during that time, which would require energy expenditure of 37000 joules. Let's also assume you ate the same as you usually do for weight maintenance. If you spent all that energy during the interviews, it would require sustained power output of 740 watts over your usual energy expenditure. If you spent all that energy during waking hours (let's say 16 hours a day), it would require power output of 230 watts over usual energy expenditure. And finally, if you spent that energy during entire day, it would require power output of 155 watts over usual energy expenditure. For reference, energy expenditure that would amount to 2000 kcal/day turns out to be around 100 watts. Losing 1800 grams over 5 days would require additional 3240 kcals on top of that.
- 7y ago
- CarVac 7y agoThis reminds me of the ordeals depicted in Sangatsu no Lion, a manga about professional shogi.
- brandonmenc 7y ago> 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 Citation, please. I see him making this claim in a number of articles and talks, but am having trouble finding an experiment verifying this.
- lancesells 7y agoI would love to see this as well. That's more than 2x what most people burn running a marathon. Hard to believe but would be really interesting if that's true.
- jfengel 7y agoI also doubt it, though it's not quite 2x. The number they cite is "6,000 calories a day", which presumably includes the ~2,000 calories one burns just by staying alive. A marathon runner burns ~2,600 calories on the race itself, totalling ~4,600 for the day. So it's about 1.3x rather than 2x. The numbers all have very wide error bars, so it puts 1.3 in the range closer to 1 than to 2. Still hard to believe, but I'd consider "comparable to a marathon" far more likely than "twice as much".
- zaroth 7y agoIf you’re going to be pedantic, you subtract out the baseline, and the alleged caloric burn from chess would be 1.5x the measured burn from running a marathon. But in any case it still astounds me the human body can run that far on just 2,000 calories (2.3kWh).
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoSomething you learn when you're trying to lose a lot of weight: The human body is disgustingly energy efficient.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
- maliker 7y agoI experienced this "diet" when I was having a tough time at work. Turned out for me that stress eating calories added up to way more than what the insomnia and nervous thinking burned. Your results may vary.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoI did tests for weight loss. I found that you don't lose weight until you sleep. (stay up all night and weigh your self repeatedly, in the morning, no loss, but after you sleep and wake, your weight goes back to "morning weight") I found that if you don't sleep well, you don't lose as much. If you eat too late before going to bed, you don't lose as much. If you adjust your diet (however you want is my experience) to always be hungry for around an hour before every meal, you will lose weight. (no exercise at all) What these guys are doing seems to be actual "work", I don't think stress alone makes you lose weight. With the anecdotal data I have observed over the years "stress eating" is more common that "stress based weight loss". Maybe the activity that causes the stress directly relates to it's effect? And not all stress is equal in this way? (tournament stress vs paying the bills stress)
- sbmthakur 7y agoLack of sleep pretty much affects every system in the body. Metabolism being no exception. Mathew Walker covers this in detail in Why we sleep.
- RobertRoberts 7y agoSure, but I found something more specific. I tracked weight loss for a month. Eating only one meal a day. I recorded multiple times a day my weight. Only in the morning did I actually record any "loss". So, I did some tests for this. I stayed up all night to see if I lost weight in the morning like every other day, but I didn't. I slept, woke up in the afternoon, and I had lost .5 pounds from the previous day. Something special happens during sleep that is unrelated to a general concept of metabolism, but instead a specific process. It's like some kind of processing the bodies does that is related to weight loss/waste management that does not occur at all (or maybe only a little?) when you are awake. (my amateur assessment)
- throwaway_law 7y ago>Something special happens during sleep that is unrelated to a general concept of metabolism, but instead a specific process. Sure a number of your systems are shut down while sleeping that otherwise are active as you are awake, and other become more active. Just one example is the spike of human growth hormone (typically around 75% of HGH is released during sleep), HGH is directly related to metabolism and weight loss/gain. Also as You probably know actual fat loss (as opposed to water weight) is a function of breathing, as in fat isn't "burned" or you don't sweat out fat, but fat is metabolized a literally breathed out of the body, and during REM sleep breathing is increased. By no means is this an exhaustive list, but beyond maybe sweating a little more than normal (again water weight not fat loss) while sleeping, any actual weight loss is all a function of hormones/metabolism.
- wruza 7y agoAt 7:30 the next morning, he pulls on gray Mizzou sweats and matching running shorts, rubs the sleep from his eyes and TL;DRs to those who tired of a journalismatic narrative: Chess players have stress on tournaments and may lose 7+ kg per hard game. It is not healthy for them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- achenatx 7y agoI was 175 and have been trying to lose 5 pounds for 8 years. In the last 2 months Ive lost 10 pounds. I hit as high as 180 I started doing brazilian jiu jitsu about 7 hours/week. My body was sore for the first 1 month. I also did a low carb diet (moderate adherence) Keto generally reduces my hunger so I would skip dinner because the exercise would kill my appetite. I would then not be hungry until lunch the next day. This ended up turning into intermittent fasting. I hit 170 after about 1.5 months which was a huge milestone. The intermittent fasting was really easy (which was strange) to the point where I am only eating 0 or once every 24 hours. This last week I started losing about .4-.5 pounds/day and so I lost another 4 pounds in the last week. I believe it was the keto which kills hunger spikes, the massive exercise in the evening which killed nighttime eating which transitioned me into fasting. If you had asked me if a year ago if I could easily not eat for two days I would have said no way. Once your body is burning fat, then it is easy.
- buckthundaz 7y agoThese two resources should be very information for you: https://www.dietdoctor.com/dr-ted-naiman-carb-vs-fat-metabolism-hydraulic https://www.dietdoctor.com/dr-ted-naiman-carb-vs-fat-metabol... http://www.burnfatnotsugar.com/IF.pdf http://www.burnfatnotsugar.com/IF.pdf
- whyaduck 7y agoI've done intermittent fasting (on a low carb diet) without any other significant lifestyle changes and after a week or two hunger pangs essentially disappear during 24 hour fasts. I suspect it's just habit that makes it tolerable; your body/brain eventually become accustomed to the new rhythm of your mealtimes.
- tvanantwerp 7y agoAfter letting myself go a bit last year, I've been (with the exception of a vacation or two) strictly keto and time-restricted (at least 18:6) feeding daily. Currently 20 pounds down from my peak, and I got as far as 25 down before I spent two weeks in Europe mostly visiting biergartens. All that with not much exercise, though I'm starting to incorporate resistance training.
- keiferski 7y agoI was a competitive chess player as a kid/teenager, and distinctly remember being exhausted, both physically and mentally, after the games. It was the sort of full exhaustion that I’ve only experienced in sports where rapid strategy-making is deeply important; in hockey, for example. I’ve never gotten the same feeling from a more endurance or strength-based workout, like running or biking. I haven’t done much rock climbing but I imagine it’s akin to chess.
- olliej 7y agoIs it a long term coma?
- castlecrasher2 7y agoEat less, lose weight. I read long ago that if you want to maintain weight, eat until you're a little bit hungry. If you want to lose weight, eat until you're still pretty hungry. I've been following the latter on and off over the years, and have been doing it again for the past 8 weeks and have lost a pound a week. I've found it to be much easier than calculating BMR/caloric rate then calculating calories and setting up portion sizes, etc.
- Touche 7y agoI've found that to be true as well. One thing I do is I eat before dinner (especially when going out for dinner). If I'm really hungry I'll order the largest thing on the menu and overeat. If I have a banana before going out I'll make a wiser choice. Losing weight is all about hunger management. Eat free foods like fruits and vegetables when you're hungry. Eat 3 balanced meals a day. That's it, that's all it takes. If you turn losing weight into a job by counting calories and doing meal planning and whatnot you'll quit because you already have a job. So just use some basic common sense judgments and make sure you're never too hungry because that's when you'll make mistakes.
- drKarl 7y agoFruits are not free food in terms of dieting, as they have a lot of sugar (fructose). Bananas in particular are very rich in sugar so are best avoided when on a diet.
- chrisfinne 7y agoAll true, unless you do a low-carb diet. Once your body adjusts (2-3 weeks for me), your hunger feelings are significantly dampened because your blood sugar is always stable. This is why low-carb diets are considered "easier" by many people.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoYou can actually eat more and still lose weight. You just have to eat foods that are low in calories, like cruciferous vegetables, water-based oatmeal, brown rice. You can eat a few apples and still be eating fewer calories than if you ate a single bran muffin. The whole carbohydrates in the apple also mean that you're less likely to spike your blood sugar and experience glycation, than if you were to eat the processed carbs in the muffin.
- papito 7y agoAfter 30, one should seriously evaluate breakfast. Three meals per day becomes just too many calories to burn. Two meals for an adult is plenty. Coffee in the morning suppresses hunger, so one can go until 12-12:30 before getting woozy. At some point I noticed that I was force-feeding myself lunch if I ate breakfast. Hunger is a normal feeling - embrace it.
- scarface74 7y agoI’m really trying to get out of the breakfast habit. If I cut out breakfast just on the 4 days a week I don’t work out (as opposed to the three days that I workout around 2.5 hours a day) I could easily lose over a pound a month and get past my “I think I look decent in a short sleeve shirt” plateau to, a toned very low body fat weight.
- Forge36 7y agoI've done this for years. Still fat. I'm not skipping dinner, and I'm dropping pounds really quickly
- Touche 7y agoChange what you eat, not how often you eat. A yogurt and some fruit is fine for breakfast.
- bluthru 7y agoNot if you want to limit your eating window, which is a great way to make your body burn its fat reserves.
- gfiorav 7y agoI lost 10kg in 90 days. I didn't follow any fancy diet. Just counted calories. Yes, I know, I know it's flawed, but many of you are reasoning your way into eating what you want and the problem is discipline. I ate ice cream along the way. I too ate what I wanted, but I just tracked everything (I used lose it) and never overate my budget. The first diet that ever really worked. Nothing can replace discipline.
- ectospheno 7y agoDiets fail because people make them something you do rather than something you are. You can stop a diet. A life change is permanent. I’m down 42 pounds from my max weight and am at a healthy bmi. I too eat whatever I want I just eat less of it. It stuck when I stopped calling it a diet. It is just how I live now. I feel tons better and my knees stopped hating me.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- _raoulcousins 7y agoI used to play a lot of all day Magic: the Gathering tournaments where the only option was overpriced convention junk food. 12 hours of stressful competition was enough to keep off hunger and I lost weight from this.
- test24 7y agoProper sleep is most basic first step.
- cheald 7y agoMost people don't realize that a huge amount of their basal metabolism goes into operating the brain. Just "keeping the lights on" in the average person accounts for around 20% of your total daily energy expenditure! 6k cals/day is highly suspect, but anyone who has spent all day thinking hard can attest to how tiring it can be. That big brain of ours eats a lot of calories. The other thing is that stress causes the body to produce cortisol - the catabolic hormone which makes it easier for your body to break down tissue into energy. Naturally, this causes our body to respond with an instinct to take in energy. In many folks, this prompts overeating, which is why stress is often blamed for increases in fat, but if you don't adjust your diet at all, it can accelerate energy expenditure.
- tomcooks 7y agoThe ESPN targeted ads provider requires "several minutes" to "process" the opting out of tracking. Blacklisted ESPN and Truste.com from my forum. Blah.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- pastor_elm 7y ago>Today's players have begun to incorporate strict food and fitness regimens to increase oxygen supply to the brain during tournaments Is there really such a possible variance when it comes to getting oxygen to the brain? Why don't they just take hits of O2 then?
- cheald 7y agoAbsolutely. The difference in VO2 max (essentially, efficiency of oxygen uptake) between trained and untrained individuals is stark and substantial. Hits of pure O2 produce a euphoric high, which probably isn't what you want during intense mental competition.
- marknadal 7y agoI lost 35 pounds in about 45 days without working out (coding all day) by fasting for 3 to 5 days at a time. I got a lot of keto flu tho, and would always eat after that, or try to minimize it by drinking a ton of (no sugar) vitamin water and/or 1 egg.
- mindgam3 7y agoThe "wealthy friend" referenced in the first sentence would have to be Rex Sinquefield, aka the billionaire patron of American chess, based in Saint Louis. I wonder why Sinquefield would want to remain anonymous for this article. He goes out of his way to plaster his name on everything, not just his chess championships ("Sinquefield Cup") but apparently professorships ("Sinquefield Professor of Economics") [0]. [0] https://unewsonline.com/2018/09/06/sinquefield-donation-causes-controversy/ https://unewsonline.com/2018/09/06/sinquefield-donation-caus...
- babyslothzoo 7y agoTo lose weight, eat fewer calories than you expend. To gain weight, eat more calories than you expend. It's that simple. This is basic physics, weight gain and loss is not complicated.
- Tycho 7y agoYour body needs fuel (nutrition) to sustain its activity. If you take in more fuel than your activity requires, your body will convert it into excess fat. If you take in less fuel than your activity requires, your body will burn fat. What else is there to discuss? I honestly do not understand how we have these convoluted discussions. The only other thing worth considering is how you can make it easier for yourself to cope with the feeling of hunger, so that you don't give in and eat more than you need.
- stronglikedan 7y ago> how you can make it easier for yourself to cope with the feeling of hunger, so that you don't give in and eat more than you need. It took me about 6 months to learn the portion of food that will fill me up, so that I can stop eating well before my stomach takes it's sweet-ass time telling my brain it's full. Best thing I ever did for myself.
- Tycho 7y agoHad a colleague who went from near-obese to slim in about 6 months. One tip was to eat small amounts throughout the day, and stuff like bread that fills you up, not stuff like salad that will leave you feeling empty. From my own experience I think being well attuned to your own appetite patterns is helpful, like you say. That's going to be hard if you have a volatile and busy lifestyle.
- hoschicz 7y agoI first wrote this as a reply in this thread and now I'm looking at it, I think it's relevant to the article as a whole -- sugar, insulin, calorie reduction, stress, fitness in general. I believe that the "diet" mentioned in the article is in effect a calorie-restriction one. > Losing weight and gaining weight is simple physics. > you are losing weight because you are consuming less calories. This is only true in the first up to 6 months of a calorie-restriction diet. Then, body adjusts its metabolism (lower body temperature, making you feel more lethargic to keep you from exercising, etc) and your weight begins to slowly climb back up, sans any further calorie restriction. At this point, it's easy for a dieter to blame himself of lacking willpower: "it worked, and it stopped working now, I must've been not strict enough!". The same thing happens if you force someone to overeat even if they're not hungry. They will gain weight -- for up to 6 months. Then, the body increases its base metabolic rate and adjusts to the new food intake level. As Dr. Jason Fung meticulously explains in his book Obesity Code, there seems to be a weight set point. He then argues that the root cause of obesity, and the body's set weight point, is insulin resistance. The books hails your grandma's advice: "Cut back sugars and starchy foods. No snacking." This is from the last part (The Solution): 1. Reduce your consumption of added sugars. 2. Reduce your consumption of refined grains. 3. Moderate your protein intake. 4. Increase your consumption of natural fats. 5. Increase your consumption of fiber and vinegar. The author also stresses the importance of fasting. Everything the book asserts seems to be pretty well backed by science, go check for yourself. Source: Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Read it, it's not only a brilliant weight loss book, but also a wonderful book about how the wrong incentives for companies have led to the obesity epidemic in the US.
- berdon 7y agoYeah, I lost 100lb from calorie restriction over the course a year. Eating the exact same things just less of it. There is no panacea for weight loss - everyone is different. A book is not a source. Providing a book and then cavalierly saying people should read it because it's backed by science is pretty rude.
- dpark 7y ago> There is no panacea for weight loss - everyone is different. You described the panacea: Eat less. If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight. This effect is so predictable and reliable that taken to its logical conclusion it results in death. We call this starvation. And everyone really isn’t different. The only thing different for most people is what sort of diet they find more tolerable. The fundamentals don’t change though.
- aoro 7y agoI've never seen an overweight person who exercised regularly and ate decently well. I'm not talking about hitting the gym 6 days a week but a healthy amount of daily activity be it walking, running, surfing, hiking. It is not and never has been complicated to lead a healthy lifestyle.
- arh68 7y agoI went to a lot of chess tournaments as a kid, and I never noticed this phenomenon. I can only name a few GMs that were on the fat side, though. Not eating is, I think, part of it. Usually a tournament with 40/2+1 time control spaces rounds 6.5 hours apart, and a single round could take close to 6 hours. A full 6-hour game is unusual, but 4 hours of only staring at the board, drinking water, and walking around looking at other games is normal. I can't remember if food was even allowed at the table; I only remember one time seeing food: at a scholastic tournament, my opponent ate a clementine before the match. Technically, 40/2+1 gives you enough time to drive to Taco Bell (even on your move), but I've never heard of anyone doing it. If you ask my mom, she'll remember seeing kids from out-of-state wandering between rounds: "have you eaten lunch?" "No...?" like they hadn't even been thinking about it. Just total space cadet stuff, sometimes. (she drove the kid to McD's, I think)
- mudmanc4 7y agoThe author is in my opinion and (whatever little it may be) experience spot on. More people, have a starvation issue, they are eating carbohydrates, where the body makes them on it's own. Before we had 'food' on every corner at each gas station, we hunted, (being physical) until we scored that game. Not three or six meals a day, not chemically processed 'food stuffs' that shock the endocrine system and break the very nature of how our systems function. I say starvation as in , when food is scarce, the body somehow knows, and stores what is taken in, for future use. Yea, were all horders by nature.
- s2557376 7y agowhat's the purpose of not moving to lose weight?
- logfromblammo 7y agoSo how long before it is possible to 3D-print a brain-sized, person-specific artificial organ, composed primarily of brown adipose tissue, blood vessels, and "skin", connect it to the blood supply with sterile tubing, and refrigerate it in a portable plug-in cooler, to create a 6000 kcal/day energy deficit? Lose 100 pounds in 60 days without surgery. Some infection risk. Grid power required.
- Geee 7y agoMost comments so far seem to focus on the weight loss part, but I don't think that's very interesting. What's more interesting is how he is able to manage mental exhaustion and performance with this regimen. I think everything here applies to other mentally exhaustive work such as software engineering as well. Maybe there's a need for more systematic approach for exercise and diet for software engineering. Not for weight loss, but better sustained performance in the job.
- ece 7y agoHow to get a high metabolism as a kid, a theory: play chess.