Hi Erich

I have a horrible feeling we're hijacking this thread and that wasn't my intention and I'm sure it not yours either, so apologies to the OP if we have.

Also, I think we're moving away from the point I was trying to make to the OP about losing his gut and that is that reducing his carb intake might be an effective alternative to cardio, especially when he's been sat in a cab for long hours etc etc.

I know, because I have manipulated my carb intake to lose fat for many years now, that it works for me. If it works for me it must work for other people. Not everybody, maybe, but at least some. If the OP is like me and there's a fair chance he maybe then it might work for him too.

I'm not suggesting anyone does the Atkins diet or other high protein/low carbs diets as such, but getting your body into fat burning mode does definitely burn fat. The problem is it also fucks up your workouts.

So, if the OP decided to give the low carb way to lose fat a go, I was trying to suggest ways of significantly reducing his carb intake in order to lose the fat, while still trying to eat enough carbs to keep up the intensity of his workouts and keep in fat burning mode. For me, I found the best way to do that is eat most of your daily carb intake both pre and post workout. When I've lost enough of my winter plumage, as I call it, I'll add back some more oats earlier in the day and berries and other fruits etc in some Greek yoghurt during the day.

With regard to the time it takes to cleave apart the individual amino acids, I would suggest that this is the reason we consume whey isolate (a very fast acting protein), thereby reducing as much as possible the time it takes the body to extract them.

Follow this up with a wholefood source which breaks down slowly and we have a constant trickle of amino acids for the next few hours or until we next eat.

I agree with your questioning the amount of carbs you need to create an effective insulin spike. I would suggest that every time we workout our carbohydrate needs will be slightly different. I might be talking out of my arse but it must surely depend on the intensity of your workout ie how much glycogen you will have burned up working out and therefore how much needs to be replaced.

We can only deal with so much glucose at any given time, the excess gets converted into fat. When we drain our muscles of glycogen (which is basically stored glucose) by working out then they need to be refilled. This now empty storage tank (for want of a better word) allows us to eat more carbs by before any excess gets converted into fat. I repeat, it's only the excess that gets turned into fat. This also explains why the more muscle we carry the more carbs we can eat before getting fat.

The muscles are one storage tank for glucose, but we also have others, our liver being another. When following a low carb diet these tanks are either emptied completely (probably not completely, but you know what I mean), emptied slightly or anywhere in between depending on how low our carb intake is and how much exercise etc we perform. If we start our workout with empty tanks we are able to eat a lot more carbs before any excess than if we had full up tanks. Which helps if we want to lose fat!

The problem with empty tanks in our muscles, I suppose, is that when we workout we'll have no energy to work out with. That's why I eat some complex carbs pre workout. I'm sure that consuming simple or fast acting carbs will fill our muscles with glycogen just as effectively as the slower carbs, but for me, the complex carbs I eat serve other health giving purposes as well and pre workout is a good time to eat, for example, oats without risking fat gain.

Creating an insulin spike to drive amino acids into your muscles post workout is desirable but having excessive insulin all the time is why we get fat. It's all about balance.

Your point about the muscles cannibalizing is a good one and that is why, in my experience, restricting calories as well as restricting carbs doesn't work. If we eat the same or maybe slightly less calories but reduce carbs and increase our protein intake that cannibalization shouldn't happen or if it does should be minimal. Anorexic people who eat next to nothing die as a result of their bodies consuming its own store of amino acids. These amino acids or essential fatty acids to give it a better word come from muscles. Muscles include the heart, the kidneys, the liver etc and your own body eating it's own liver or kidney is not good.

Remember also, that this is aimed at anyone who primarily wants to lose fat, not those whose main aim is to gain muscle.

A lot of this is in layman's terms. But I hope it explains my take on the process by which too many carbs can make us fat.

I hope all this - your input as well as mine - is useful to the OP if he does decide to cut back on his carbs. If not, really sorry for hijacking your thread, OP.