Originally Posted by
sprince
I think there is some truth to that. But the trade off is that you teach your body to become good at storing fat to use later during long endurance rides. So if your only concern is increasing endurance it's a good thing. But if you are trying to loose weight and there is any chance that one day you will not ride enough miles to offset your recently enhancedability to store fat, then you're screwed.
IME riding easy/moderate doesn't teach your body to store fat, only to utilize it. However too many people eat more both on and off the bike than the calories they burn when doing more moderate rides. Make half the watts, eat less than half the food. It takes a lot of discipline. Chris Carmichael recently illustrated this with a century ride he and a buddy did, a moderate ride at conversational pace (for him), under 5 hours, while consuming only 120 calories/hour.
I think this is the origin of the idea that if you want to lose weight, you'd best do it in fall and winter, because once the season starts you're going to have to eat more, especially on the bike, to support the long hard efforts of the high season. Lance was said to go out for 6 hour rides in December with only water in his bottles.