Your body will adapt to your daily expenditures of energy if it's consistent enough.. I don't know if I articulated that well, but I can relate to what you're saying.
I'm a Sous Chef at a restaurant and generally walk between 12-30,000 steps at work depending on the time if year/business volume. If your heart rate isn't significantly increased from it's resting state, the everyday consistent walking will appear to have a vastly diminished effect. I would theorize that our metabolism adjusts a d adapt to this "normal/routine" behavior to maintain more of a homeostasis.
As others have said, you still need to eat more to gain the size...you can't build a house without lumber(technically i know you can lol), and the calories/protein are your lumber.
When it comes to getting "ripped", you'll simply have to do more targeted cardio. Elevated heart rare, etc. You are essentially cancelling out your intake with your expenditure nearly perfectly if you're seeing absolutely no weight/water retention and/or body composition changes. If you were eating a maintenance diet, you quite possibly would lose bf over a long duration.
I would say to target 4,000 calories.
Target foods as well that have excellent micronutrients as well as macro. Eggs, Greek yogurt, basmati rice, etc... keep your carbs high! You absolutely need the calories, energy, and glycogen retention from carbs. Carbs usually consist of around 60% of my calories on a bulk depending on my goals and training style.
Try 6 meals at 600cals if you can't get to 4000. And like someone else stated, you are possibly compromising your health by using these anabolics, don't let lack of eating or fear of fat gain/fast food be the reason that you don't get optimal results.
If you need to,get a lil' dirty to get to 4000 cals lol. I'm not saying eat shit everyday but sometimes a massive eating day or simply a massive fast food meal can help revitalize/shocked that metabolism.
