In today’s article, we will look at the effects of creatine weight gain. If you’re trying to reduce weight, gain strength, or sustain your current weight, weighing yourself on a regular basis will help you keep on track. However, you can be puzzled if you walk on the scale one day and note a rapid 5 or 10-pound gain.
Creatine supplementation can become one viable explanation of accelerated weight growth. In this post, you’ll discover how creatine will lead to weight gain, how much weight people often gain when taking the supplementation, and what this indicates for your appearance and wellbeing.
What Is Creatine Afterall All?
Creatine is a sports product that helps people lift heavy weights, do more reps, and become more powerful.
In addition, it is also a naturally occurring compound that your body uses to produce energy while you work out.
The amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine contain around 1 gram of creatine a day in your body. It can also be found in foods such as rare beef, which has 3 grams per pound.
People usually take 3-5 grams of creatine monohydrate every day, which is the most common and well-studied type. As a consequence, after around 4 weeks, their muscles hit creatine saturation thresholds.
Using a loading process is another way to get quicker results from creatine. People take 20-30 grams of creatine a day for a week during the loading process, then a smaller regular dose after that.
Because your body uses creatine to recycle energy, taking supplements to boost your creatine levels can help you perform better in short-burst, heavy, or explosive movements.
Creatine’s power advantages will also help you gain lean muscle mass. It’s as plain as that: if you can lift more weight, you’ll grow muscle quicker.
Does creatine make you gain weight?
To be brief, yes, taking creatine supplements will make you gain weight. When you use creatine, research indicates that you can gain weight quickly, particularly if you use a loading process. In a 2003 trial, for instance, participants added a total of 3.75 pounds following 30 days of high-dose creatine.
Creatine Weight Gain First Week
A more recent 2016 study found that 7 days of creatine loading resulted in an overall weight increase of 2.2 pounds in youth soccer players. Perhaps, most specifically, the bulk of the weight gain in these experiments (and some related creatine studies) is due to water retention.
Therefore, if you are worried about getting fat the good news is that creatine water retention is what actually makes you get weight, which is not actually fat.
If your target is hypertrophy, on the other hand, you may be surprised to find that you didn’t gain 5 pounds of lean muscle mass quickly.
Most people tell that, however, creatine and water weight are actually not a big deal either way. There isn’t much of a difference unless you’re a weight-class competitor who wants to stay inside a certain weight range.
Continue reading and learn about the effects of creatine weight gain on your body goals!
If you’re in the midst of a fat-loss process and start substituting with creatine, you might be surprised by the unexpected increase of creatine water weight gain that occurs.
how much weight can you gain from creatine in a month?
Adults gain 1.5-3.5 pounds on average during the first week of Creatine loading, but this weight gain may be attributed to water retention. A person who uses Creatine for up to three months can add up to 6.5 pounds of lean mass greater than someone who does not use it.
If you’re concerned about water weight gain, stop taking it at least two weeks before the weight-loss date. You will add water weight overall, but you will gain so much more than that.
Will Creatine Make You Fat?
However, the good news is that creatine does not cause you to gain more fat. Any rapid weight increases you experience in terms of creatine are almost certainly water weight gain.
Does Creatine Cause Weight Gain?
Quick creatine supplementation has been shown in several trials to boost water weight but not body fat amounts.
There’s no drawback of consuming creatine if the aim is to lose weight because it doesn’t produce available calories and doesn’t seem to mess with your body’s capacity to burn fat.
Taking creatine for weight gain and lifting heavy weights during fat loss is a good thing since it improves your lifting capacity, and weight training during fat loss is good for your body composition.
Does Creatine Make You Retain Water?
The short answer is yes. Creatine supplementation may induce water retention since it is an osmotic substance. To put it another way, as the body’s creatine levels rise, the creatine will draw in more water with it.
Creatine supplementation has also been shown to improve intracellular and extracellular water or the amount of water within and outside your cells.
Does Creatine Make You Look Fat?
More water stored within cells can improve your attractiveness by making you seem more muscular or at least “bigger.” Extracellular water (the water outside of your cells) will, on the other hand, trigger mild “bloating” symptoms that seem to be fat benefits.
Also, exercise experts may have informed you that creatine supplementation doesn’t induce bloating, but this is false.
Creatine will improve total water retention, according to most research, and at least one analysis found an increase in extracellular water but not intracellular water.
Key point: Creatine can, but does not always trigger water weight gain, which may make you appear bulkier, fat, or both. It differs from person to person.
Creatine For Lean Muscle
Does Creatine Build Muscle Mass?
Creatine is one of the strongest muscle-building products of all time for the purposes we’ve already discussed.
Any sudden weight increase once you start taking creatine, on the other hand, is impossible to be from genuine lean muscle mass.
Your body can look more muscular if you experience intracellular water retention when taking creatine. However, tests show that taking creatine for a few days to a month would not result in meaningful, immediate increases in lean muscle mass.
Please remember that creatine is mainly used to increase muscle mass and endurance in the gym. Although adding a few extra reps to your hard sets will help you gain dense muscles over time, it won’t help you gain 5-10 pounds in the next several weeks.
What to Do If You Gain Weight on Creatine
You’ll know it’s successful if you gain water weight by taking creatine as a pre-workout. Aside from the psychological effects of gaining weight and some small differences in appearance, using creatine to gain weight is completely safe.
As a result, the only option you should do is zero — if at all practicable, just ignore it. Taking creatine will help you get greater outcomes if you continue to eat well and exercise hard.
Even if you continue to use creatine, your body will shed the extra water weight on its own. Our bodies appear to spontaneously level out over time thanks to a phenomenon known as homeostasis.
But what if the water weight increase worries you, or if you’re planning a short trip and don’t want to be bloated?
Simple: do not take creatine supplements for a while.
Any day, the body depletes and loses between 1-2 percent of its creatine stocks. As a result, even though the muscles are completely saturated, you could be back to baseline within a month, if not sooner (more creatine math here).
And, luckily, water retention is less common when you resume creatine, particularly if you don’t load it or take a lower dose than before.
The increased overall body water linked with creatine supplementation does not occur with low doses of creatine intake, according to a 2017 report investigating the impact of low-dose, short-term creatine supplementation.
This suggests that if creatine bloat is causing you problems, take a month off and then try resuming at a reduced dosage without loading (3-5 grams per day at most).
Despite the fact that creatine water retention is safe, if you’ve gained a lot of weight in a short period of time, you can see a doctor. This is especially true whether you have some concerns, are on any medication, or are suffering from a serious disorder.
Creatine Safety: Any Side Effects and Who Should Use It
Creatine, including protein powder, is one of the healthier and most well-studied products on the market today.
It is almost particularly healthy, according to extensive studies, with no harmful side effects in people ranging from children to the elderly.
And mega-doses of 30 grams a day, according to surveys, are potentially effective for healthier people for 5 years or more.
A disturbed stomach or other stomach problems are a very frequent but mild side effect of creatine. Similar to creatine bloating, the chances are good that these intestinal side effects are caused by creatine’s osmotic effects.
If you’re having stomach problems after taking it, consider these suggestions:
- Instead of one large dosage, take smaller doses during the day
- Start by dissolving it in hot water
- Switch to a micronized creatine brand
- Taking 3-5 grams a day instead of packing with heavy doses
That’s what there is to it. There’s little to think for with creatine supplementation except bloating and a minor disturbed stomach. Additionally, though you may have read that it induces hair loss, this is highly doubtful.
Does creatine make you gain weight if you don’t workout?
Some people believe that if they take creatine but do not exercise, they would gain weight, although this may not be the case. Creatine has 0 calories and has no effect on fat metabolism. Taking creatine and without working out will result in nothing.
So, Should You Take Creatine?
Anyone who wishes to gain lean muscle or boost their health should seriously evaluate it from a performance perspective.
Who Should Take Creatine?
And if you don’t think about adding weight or improving your athletic fitness, creatine supplementation will benefit you.
It can prevent cognitive impairment, reverse the risks of stress and sleep deprivation, and improve mental function, according to research.
iFitzone does not recommend you can take creatine, so if you’re already consuming vitamins, there’s a good possibility creatine has more statistical support than what you’re actually taking. This is food for thinking.
Is Creatine A Weight Gainer?
It can help you improve your fitness results, add more lean muscle, and improve your brain health and mental activity.
It may or may not allow you to add a few pounds of water weight, giving you a more bulky or overweight appearance.
You won’t know unless you do it, because if the water weight worries you, you should stop taking it and restart it at a lower daily dosage. In any case, the chances are that no one except you would care.