Originally Posted by Carbonfiberboy

I didn't read this whole long thread and maybe this has been covered, but you don't need to eat anything before what should only be a hour's ride. I take a water bottle on rides like that but seldom even need that. The whole point of losing weight is to go calorie negative. You need to increase your muscles ability to burn fat. Riding without food for up to 2 hours will help that along. As far as weight loss goes, an even better way to teach your body fat burning is to ride for 4 hours. It really doesn't matter what you eat on a long ride like that as long as you only eat to keep your energy up, small quantities say every 1/2 hour. Carbs work great for that.

"Fat burns in a carbohydrate flame." Riding slow because you don't have any energy is not a better solution. Not eating any or very few carbs ruins your bodies ability to burn them rapidly. Your body is simply a trainable chemical factory. It does what you teach it to do. I can tell exactly when I get low on carbs - I start to go slower for the same apparent effort. You stay just above that level and you'll burn lots of fat.

Listen to terrymorse. He' knows what he's talking about. We've been fooling around with this stuff for a long time.