Stop Obsessing Over Your Macros. Only 2 Things Matter

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:39 Our new study

03:43 Glycogen depletion

08:53 Macro splits for lifters

10:04 Additional energy intake

11:09 Lean bulk

12:54 Conclusion

Transcript:

Hot take #1: For most lifters, long term strength gains and your performance in the gym are not reliably affected by your carbohydrate intake.

Hot take #2: Consequently, for most lifters, the ratio of carbs to fat in your diet, whether you have 30% carbs, 35% carbs, is largely irrelevant when you already get enough protein and you’re at least above your minimum fat intake.

Hot take #3: For most lifters outside of energy deficit, more calories mostly contribute to fat gain, not additional muscle growth or strength development.

I know absolute crazy talk, but all of these conclusions are actually supported by numerous studies at this point, including a new one that we just published.

We had a group of trained male lifters keep their training and nutrition the same for 16 weeks. During this time they received a supplement. It always contained some protein, but during one of the eight week blocks it also contained 50g additional carbohydrates. Research is increasingly moving towards these type of within subject designs because every man is his own control in this type of study. This eliminates a lot of the confounding that we normally see in studies where you study different individuals in both groups and then the different individuals they have different genetics, different motivation level, different effort, different lifestyles, different nutrition… All of these factors impact muscle growth, and therefore you need very large sample sizes to equate all of these factors by randomization. So it cancels out if you have enough subjects, but most of these are not that large or that long. So it works much better if you can do a study where you have the same subject being your own control. In this study, everything basically the same, and we are pretty good adherence in terms of their training volume and their macros, only carbohydrate intake significantly differed between the groups. And then you can see, okay, what is the effect of the additional carbohydrate intake in these same individuals while controlling for most other factors?

Food logs during the control condition reported an average carbohydrate intake of 215g. So that’s pretty representative of kind of a low normal intake, and therefore we can see what is the effect of adding 50g or the achieved contrast that we actually got based on food logs with 33g, on top of the 215g. Then we tested their body composition using DEXA scans, we measured muscle size with ultrasound scans, we measure their strength gains via their 1 rep max on the squat, we also measured peak torque of the quads and we measured their fatigue index.

The result? Absolutely NADA was affected by the carbohydrate intake.

In this image you can see an overview of the results. You can see that almost all the contrasts, so the difference between the carbohydrate and the protein conditions, the protein condition had the same protein intake as the carbohydrate condition, so it’s basically a control group, all of these measures fluctuated around zero meaning no difference. Now this is of course just one study. And it’s an eight week study in trained lifters who will not gain that much muscle mass to begin with, especially not in an eight week period. Difference in carbohydrate intake was also modest, although this exactly the realistic type of difference that we were interested in. So this study cannot exclude that carbs have potentially some positive effects on performance or long term gains.

However, we conducted a systematic research review in 2022 where we looked at many more studies and the conclusions hold. Of the short term studies 7/7 found no significant effect on long term strength development. Of the long term studies 15/17 found no significant effect of carbohydrate intake. One study favored carbs, but one study favored lower carb intakes. We also conducted a review of acute studies in which pre-workout or total carbohydrate intake were changed between the groups, and they measured the performance during one workout, and we found that in most studies, again, there was no effect of carbohydrate intake on performance. This was especially true when the workout had ten or fewer sets per muscle group per session.

At very high volumes, so when you’re doing like a bro split, and you’re doing 15-20 sets per muscle group per workout, which is not a good idea anyway, based on modern science, but then there was actually in some of the studies an effect of carbohydrate intake, of course, favoring higher carbohydrate intakes. Because then you might actually run into critical levels of glycogen depletion. We found that throughout the literature, there was no more than 40% depletion with traditional strength training workouts, including bodybuilding type workouts, even with 15-20 sets per workout.

Now, some of the type-II fibers might actually run into critical depletion levels when you go over that very high end of more than 10 sets per workout per muscle group, and that’s probably where we see the effects of carbs potentially matter. But for most lifters that are doing more conventional program, carbohydrate intake really doesn’t reliably affect performance beyond a placebo effect. You just don’t deplete your muscles of enough glycogen during the workout because the rest times between sets are pretty long, There is a lot of eccentric muscle action which doesn’t require that much glycogen, and between the workouts there is a lot of rest time. So even if there is a significant depletion in one workout, and significant being less than half of total stores, then you have typically at least 24 hours between the workouts to resynthesize that. And even on a low carbohydrate intake the body can achieve that.

Higher carbohydrate intakes are absolutely necessary when you need to replenish stores more quickly, but given that most people don’t train a muscle again until at least 24 hours later, it doesn’t really matter for us lifters. We also informally looked at muscle growth and found that out of the 15 studies 10 of them found no significant effects, but 5 of them did actually favor higher carb intakes. However, in those 5 studies, it was very clear that the higher carbohydrate intake group also had a higher energy intake. And here these are exactly the studies that most people sight as proof that you need higher carbohydrate intakes.

What actually happens in these studies is that usually the low carb intake has a ketogenic diet or a very low carbohydrate intake. As a result they restrict not just a carbohydrate intake, but their overall energy intake also drops significantly and they actually lose more fat. So if you want to defend the position that higher carbs are better for muscle growth and strength development based on these studies, then you should also acknowledge that in these studies, there’s often greater fat loss in the low carbohydrate group.

However, if we look at studies with controlled energy intake and protein intake, we see that neither fat loss, nor muscle growth, nor strength development is affected by carbohydrate intake For muscle growth, specifically, we also published a meta analysis earlier this year of 11 controlled studies that controlled for protein intake and, where available, energy intake, and we found that, again, carbohydrate intake did not significantly affect muscle growth.

I should also note that the way muscle growth is measured in most studies at this point actually favors higher carbohydrate intakes by design, because muscle growth is often measured in the form of lean mass or fat free mass, and we know that, if you have higher carbohydrate intake, then you get more glycogen storage and associated water retention, which increases lean mass or fat free mass without actually increasing contractile tissue. So you would expect that there is already some increase in lean mass from a higher carbohydrate intake that does not yet actually reflect contractile tissue. This is also why on a high carb diet you feel more full and you often also get the better pump. This is real. And associatedly, on ketogenic diets people feel more dry and ripped, and that’s also true. And that’s just an inevitable effect of higher vs. lower carbohydrate intakes.

But that does not actually affect neuromuscular tissue in the sense of contractile tissue that makes you stronger and aids long term muscle growth. It’s just a one time effect of a difference in fluid shifts and glycogen shifts. High carb diets are the default recommendation in most bodybuilding circles, including evidence based circles, but this position is really not very evidence based. Vast majority of research has almost unanimously failed to find benefits of carbohydrate intake on muscle growth or strength development. What I think happens anecdotally with people that think that they get more muscle growth with higher carb intakes, insofar as that’s even possible to really tell, is that when they go on a high carb diet, they literally they look more full and they mistake that for additional gains.

Moreover, many people, when they go on higher carb intakes because it’s so easy to overeat on palatable carbs, they also end up with a higher total energy intake. We see both of these things very reliably in research. But under the best controlled conditions we see that when you equate for all factors actual muscle growth in terms of contractile tissue and strength development do not differ between higher and lower carb diets. This is, with a big caveat for people that don’t do extreme volumes per session, so you’re doing up to 10 sets per muscle group per session, and you’re not doing an additional sport like tennis or soccer, which has a dramatically higher carbohydrate requirements because the glycogen depletion is dramatically higher. It’s a continuous activity, so you’re nonstop active instead of doing like a set of 30s with a 90s rest period, it’s much more concentric muscle action, it’s exactly all in the anaerobic zone, so it’s constantly burning carbs at a very high rate, and its total duration and volume are simply much, much, much higher.

So for pure lifters, carb intake doesn’t matter, but if you’re also doing concurrent sports like a tennis player, a kickboxer, then carbohydrate intake becomes a lot more relevant. So overall, I think people obsess way too much over their macros. There’s a lot of debate online whether the best macro split is 40% carbs, 45% carbs, is 20% fat better than 25% fat. And these things for most lifters, really don’t affect your gains very much. If you’re not a concurrent lifter that also does some type of sport, your carbohydrate intake just doesn’t matter that much.

The main thing that matters is your protein intake and your total energy intake. Once you have those two things in check, then what I teach most of my students is the rest is absolute fine tuning. There are some caveats that I discuss in my PT course, like carbohydrate intolerance and like I said, concurrent lifters. But for the vast majority of lifters, it really is the fine tuning and it’s not going to make or break your gains.

If you just focus on getting enough protein in not having like a ludicrously low fat intake, which is unhealthy and interferes with vitamin absorption and anabolic hormone production, then whether you have 30% fat, 40% fat, 50% fat, even ketogenic diet, it doesn’t really affect your gains. So if you prefer being on a low carb diet, definitely don’t worry about having to need a lot of carbs to perform well in the gym or make good gains.

Interestingly, if we go back to our new study, our study was deliberately set up to test two things: additional carbohydrate intake, which we just discussed, but also additional energy intake, because the control condition had a lower total energy intake. Protein intake was the same, but energy intake was higher in the higher carbohydrate condition. Now this energy has to go somewhere. And indeed we did find a non significant trend for greater fat and fat free mass gains in the higher carb condition, but overall, if you look at all of the studies and they’re all cited in the paper that you can get for free, by the way with the link in the description, then we see minimal effects of additional energy intake on muscle growth and strength development outside of energy deficit.

In energy deficit, we have a meta analysis and multiple studies showing that when the energy deficit is larger, it decreases muscle protein synthesis. In high energy deficits you actually get more muscle protein breakdown, and reduced muscle growth. Now in energy surplus we don’t see these effects. So there seems to be some asymmetry there where if you’re already at least in the maintenance energy intake or a very, very mild surplus, additional energy intake mostly just drives fat gain in the other studies. These findings support that when your primary goal is muscle growth, you’re probably best off with a lean bulk, not some of the old school dirty bulks where you have 20% energy surpluses or larger.

Method that I use in my App and teach most of my students in my PT course, is that you have an energy surplus that is as large as it can get without spilling over into fat gain. As soon as you’re reliably seeing increases in your skin fold calipers, your waist circumference week to week, then you’re probably at an excess energy intake, at least as a natural lifter. Enhanced lifters, lifters with muscle memory and absolute beginners can get away with a pretty large surplus, they can still gain muscle very rapidly. But as soon as your past and newbie gains face and your more advanced lifter, then it really requires a lot to gain any muscle at all, and the actual total amount of muscle that you will build, you can just do the math on how much energy that actually requires, and you see that it is very, very little. You’re talking about like 100 calories energy surplus in many cases.

Probably you do want to be an energy surplus, the literature is pretty robust that over all there does seem to be some effect of energy intake, but it’s mostly in the energy deficit camp, and it’s mostly about ensuring that you’re not often in energy deficits, because of course, on a day to day basis, you’re actually dip in and out of energy surplus and energy deficit. So it’s more about avoiding the deficit than it is about consistently maximizing the surplus. So lean bulking really is the way to go. Very small energy surplus, being very controlled with your energy intake and crucially, adapting based on your results.

That’s what my app does. And probably one of the most important things is that it looks at all your data, your weight, your measures of body fat, your macros, and it adapts your energy intake to make sure that you’re in that very fine sweet spot of gaining muscle but not gaining excess fat. And that is quite hard. It’s probably one of the most difficult things. Overall, big picture, the things that really, really matter is being in the right energy balance, having the appropriate training volume as in sets per week for muscle group, and then of course your protein intake.

These are like really big picture training and nutrition things that really drive your gains. Carb to fat ratio, energy intake beyond a small surplus is really not that important. If you’re interested in the finer details of the methodology and the full text of our papers, all of them are available for free online. You can find the links in the description. Shout outs to my co-authors. It was great work. And I hope you enjoyed these studies, they cost a pretty penny, so I hope they really help. And you’ll also find a link in the description to a 2 week free trial for my app, so go check it out. I hope you like that as well.