Guys,

I would like your opinion/experiences on what to eat pre-workout before cardio for fat loss.

I previously have been eating starchy carbs and protein before evening cardio. I switched to fasted AM cardio and my results doubled. Is it possible that when I eat carbs before cardio I am simply burning those carbs during the workout and therein not causing any real fat loss.

Keeping in mind, this principle should hold for the same reason that fasted cardio is (for many people) relatively more effective.

Also keeping in mind that EPOC after say 1 hr cardio at 85-90% HR has been shown in studies to produce a negligible calorie burn.

I can understand the neccesity of eating carbs before a resistance training exercise, as one of the more important factors is that muscles need energy to work, working causes muscle growth (in the presence of the right diet)... but eating carbs before cardio (for fat loss) just does not make any sense to me anymore

Thanks

Michael

Hum, Well there are two ways to go about this in my opinion, both lead to loss of weight, but in different forms.
In the process of working out with a pre-workout carb in your system, you stand to have much more energy, and in combination with protien, you burn both of the carb, and some of the protien, and this is ideal for weight training, aka: gaining muscle. With this in cardio, its true, you burn off the carbs, and alot of the protien, but you still tend to burn off fat.. its not half as effective as doing cardio as you first wake.
When you work out in cardio, at first thing in the AM, you stand to burn nothing but what you currently have on your frame, ie: Fat... and also, some muslce (which sucks). Now, if you are to take this same approach towards weight training, you would be burning mostly muscle and some fat.

If this is confusing, it really matters as to what you want to do. If you want to lose weight strictly, and dont care about muscle mass, than do cardio on an empty stomach at first sight of light(AM). If you want to gain, and preserve muscle mass, its partitive that you take in needed carbs and protien, at least 2 hours before work out (because you dont want to be digesting as you are working out, and you dont want to take in more than what you need) aka: dont get "full"