I guess a question I have is, how do fat and carbohydrates factor into hypertrophy? I know it's probably pretty complicated, but if there's a cliff notes version you wouldnt mind sharing, it would be much appreciated.
I just want to know how to gain the most muscle possible in the shortest amount of time with the lowest possible accumulation of body fat possible. Is gaining the maximum amount of muscle possible without adding any significant bf? I understand macro ratios needed to accomplish this might differ from person to person based on individual metabolic rate and other factors.
This could take 1000s of pages to cover lol.
The shortest answer I can give you is that both add to your calorie intake which is necessary for weight/fat/muscle gain. Protein, amino acids really, is the only one stored in your muscle tissue so everyone knows you need protein to build muscle. Carbs and fats cannot be stored as muscle tissue but they are still needed and/or can help. protein and fat's are essential nutrients whereas carbs are not but this doesn't mean you should purposely drop carbs altogether.
Fat/cholesterol helps make your hormones, helps add palatability to food, is very energy dense, adds calories etc. carbs on the other hand are the most preferred source of energy for everything in the body except for the heart. Carbs enter the body, get made into glucose and easily turned into ATP. Other sources of energy such as amino acids, ketones, fatty acids, glycerol, pyruvate, lactate, etc all can create ATP but need to go through many more processes in the citric acid cycle to do so (all of them can also turn into glucose EXCEPT fatty acids bc they can only form a double carbon acetyl-CoA due to the fact that two carbon atoms are lost to CO2 from fatty acids when they've undergone beta oxidation). Bottom line is there's many ways to make ATP and energy but carbohydrates are the most optimal way unless you suffer from diabetes or have bad insulin sensitivity or other health issues.
Carbs cannot be stored as muscle and theoretically can be stored as fat but only in a few extreme circumstances. They provide energy, they help add calories to your diet so you won't need to catabolize muscle for energy as much, they release insulin which is an anabolic and nutrient partitioning hormone, etc etc.
To get the maximum amount of muscle you need to maximize your calorie surplus but beyond a certain point you simply won't gain any extra muscle, the excess mass will be fat. To get the least amount of fat while building muscle, you need the smallest calorie surplus but then you're sacrificing the amount of muscle mass you gain. Those two goals are diametrically opposed. What you have to do is find balance for yourself as to what level of muscle and fat gain is acceptable for you.
Everyone builds muscle and stores fat at different rates depending upon genetics and hormones. Things like thyroid hormones, androgen levels, p-ratio, peptide yy, etc all affect this but you can't affect most of them significantly enough. What you can do is adjust your diet and training for your goals.
For bulking, my general advice is to figure out your TDEE via an online calculator. Add 10-20% cals or even more depending how fast you want to get big and how much fat you're willing to accept. Get 1g/lb of protein as a minimum. If you're only a few grams under no worries. If you go over no big deal so long as you still have plenty of room for carbs and fats. Next set your fat intake at 0.3-0.4g/lb. these are your minimum needs right here. Figure out how many cals these are and subtract them from your total cals. The rest of your cals fill in with carbs.
From this point you run the diet as is for 2-3weeks. Take notes whatever you need and then begin adjustments after that. Getting too fat too quickly? Back off the total calories slightly, wait 2wks and adjust again as needed. Not gaining muscle fast enough? Add more cals. You can also play around with the carb and fat amounts to see what suits you best.
