Goztepe and Boxer,
I ride a lot and I can manage fine doing a 200k ride on no starch. For a long ride I eat eggs, bacon, fruit and yoghurt before I go, then I take fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts and coconut cakes with me. If I am doing more than about 4 hours, then I will generally have to stop half way and eat something in a restaurant or buy something from a supermarket. The other thing I do is take electrolytes (like Nuun) for example, which gets you the important stuff from energy drinks to stop you cramping without the starch.
I generally drink half and half orange juice with water or coke with water.
The way I see it, complex carbs are just lots of simple carbs tied together and ultimately to get energy out of them, they need to be broken down into sugar. So on the NSD, you have to get energy more directly from monosacharides (sugar) and disacharides (like fructose which is fruit sugar). It means that you need to eat a lot more regularly than someone who can eat starch, so on the bike on a long ride I eat every half hour.
Regards,
Charlie
