Creatine is the most popular, well-researched, safe, and well-documented supplement. Creatine is used to enhance athletic performance, muscle mass, endurance, and recovery.
Creatine is popular among gym-goers and many professional athletes who compete at the highest level. Creatine is a very safe supplement that can help you effectively achieve your goals.
Whether creatine makes you gain weight or not, let’s discuss creatine as a chemical compound, how it affects our bodies, and what it does to our muscles.
The short answer to the question “Does creatine make you gain weight?” is yes. Creatine can make you gain weight, but not in a bad way. Creatine primarily increases your weight due to water retention and increased muscle mass, rather than fat gain.
Let’s see how exactly water retention and increased muscle mass contribute to weight gain.
- Water Retention: You can notice significant weight changes in the first 7 days of starting creatine supplements. Depending on the dosage, you might see your weight increase by 2-5 pounds in the first week. This is due to creatine increasing water retention in muscle cells; consequently, you will experience weight gain from water weight.
- Muscle Mass: Creatine helps with athletic performance and improves your endurance and strength. Supplementing with creatine can help you improve your reps and weights lifted. This essentially leads to increased muscle mass, and as muscle is denser than fat, your body weight will increase even though you are becoming more muscular and fit.
Please understand that creatine doesn’t cause bad weight gain. Creatine is a naturally occurring compound in our body, and our bodies make 1g of creatine every day on their own. It is essential to understand this as creatine is not ‘foreign’ to our bodies; it is a natural, healthy, and important compound.
Does Creatine Make You Gain Weight?
Let’s dive deeper into creatine to understand how it affects our bodies, how exactly it helps with our lifts, workouts and performance. If supplementing creatine is sustainable longterm, whether creatine gains and weight changes are dependent on continuously supplementing it.
What is Creatine?
Creatine is a natural source of energy that is primarily stored in your skeletal muscles, with a small amount found in the brain and heart. Creatine helps your muscles by providing a steady stream of energy, especially while you are working out.
Our bodies produce creatine naturally, but it can also be found in several food sources like red meat, seafood, and dairy products. One of the primary sources of creatine is steak. For example, 1 kg of steak contains up to 5 g of creatine.
Your liver is responsible for creatine production, with 95% of it supplied to your skeletal muscles and the remaining 5% going to your brain and heart.
Creatine is a super supplement as it is nourishing and beneficial to our health and well-being. Creatine comes in many forms, such as powder, capsules, tablets, and energy bars.
Water Weight Gain
Creatine is osmotic, and as you increase creatine levels in your body, it will increase water retention in muscle cells. This means the initial weight gain you experience will be water weight; don’t confuse it with fat gain, as they are fundamentally different.
Water weight gain can give you a more pumped, fuller, and ‘bigger’ look, which is something many gym-goers chase and desire.
In this creatine article, we discussed that there are two aspects of supplementing creatine – the loading dose and the maintenance dose.
To keep it short, the loading dose is used to fill your body with creatine in a short time. Typically, people take 20g of creatine in a day, split into 4-5 separate doses.
Afterward, they continue with the regular 3-5g daily doses, which is called the maintenance dose.
The reason we mention this is because of the problem of bloating. When you do the loading dose and consume a large amount of creatine in a single day, it can make you look puffy and cause bloating. This bloating may have the appearance of fat gain or fluffiness/puffiness, which can be unpleasant for many.
If you want to avoid the bloated look, we advise skipping the loading dose and starting slowly and safely with the regular, maintenance dosing. This is highly recommended.
Is Creatine Safe?
Creatine is one of the most well-researched and safest compounds. Creatine supplements have been around for quite some time, and it is very safe to supplement with them.
There are a few things you should be mindful of:
- Purity: Make sure you are purchasing creatine that has only one ingredient – creatine monohydrate, with no additional ingredients on the list.
- High-Quality Product: If you can afford it, purchase high-quality creatine from a reliable brand. Quality goes a long way, and when we are talking about our health, it is important to give it our utmost importance.
- Gastrointestinal Problems: If you have any gastrointestinal problems, consult with your doctor before starting any supplements. If you experience any kidney problems, high doses of creatine can cause serious issues that can lead to kidney failure.
- Hydration: When supplementing with creatine, you should be drinking adequate amounts of water to stay hydrated.
Moreover, if you have diabetes or liver problems, consult with your healthcare provider before starting to supplement with creatine. It is important to be safe and not put your health at risk.
Does Creatine Help with Building Muscle?
Creatine definitely helps with building muscle. As creatine helps with strength, endurance and athletic performance, it is only logical to assume that it helps with muscle building and there are studies to back up this claim.
Still, creatine isn’t some kind of magic or a miracle supplement, you still need to train consistently and maintain a healthy, protein-rich diet to see results, as creatine alone won’t do much.
Creatine is widely used in many sports ranging from wrestling, football, hockey, bodybuilding, etc. Creatine is an FDA approved supplement and helps with building muscle and increasing mass.
Creatine is advertised as a bodybuilding supplement, so it is natural for people to assume that it increases muscle mass with little or no effort.
Understand that creatine helps with strength, endurance, and athletic performance. However, without consistent effort, you will not get miraculously muscular. Creatine will help you push past the last reps that are the hardest, and this will be a decisive factor in increasing muscle mass.
In short, continuous and consistent effort paired with proper nutrition will help you increase muscle mass and build muscle. It will not happen in 2-3 weeks, but if you stick with it, the progress will surely be there.
Fat Gain on Creatine
Creatine has no usable calories and doesn’t interfere with how your body burns fat. Studies have shown that creatine increases water retention and has no effect on body fat levels.
If you are struggling with weight loss and debating whether creatine will make you gain weight, rest assured that it has no relation to your body’s ability to burn fat.
Note that when you start taking creatine, the number on the scale may not change or it may increase. However, the scale is generally not a determinant of your body’s health and fitness.
Everyone carries weight differently, and as you build muscle, you will get leaner and more muscular, but the scale may not change. Since muscle is denser than fat, this is only natural and nothing to worry about.
How to Deal with Creatine Weight Gain?
Whether you gain weight due to water retention, bloating, or fluffiness/puffiness, you may not enjoy it and want a fast fix. There are some routes you can take to minimize or eliminate these symptoms:
- Water retention: You can sweat out the extra water in your body. In the bodybuilding community, sauna sessions are very popular, so you may look into that if you can afford it. Alternatively, running, cardio, or high-intensity workouts are viable options. Note: Dehydration during heavy sweat sessions is a serious risk while supplementing with creatine, so make sure you are drinking enough water.
- Bloating: This is a bit harder to deal with. Firstly, identify the reason for your bloating. Did you do the loading dose? Were you experiencing bloating before taking creatine? To eliminate bloating, the best route could be taking a rest from supplementing with creatine.
- Fluffiness/Puffiness: Keto and carnivore diets have been effective in reducing fluffiness and puffiness. Still, if this is a pressing issue, you may need to stop supplementing with creatine or decrease the dose to get rid of it. Note: Do NOT consider dehydration as an option to eliminate fluffiness or puffiness. This is dangerous and can lead to serious health complications.
Stay mindful of the recommendations mentioned and avoid making any decisions that can seriously harm your health. Health is wealth, so never put it at serious risk.
Another tip to minimize water retention is to eat less sodium. This particularly means eating less junk and processed foods. Focus on fresh and healthy protein sources.
Will I Lose Gains After Quitting Creatine?
The muscle you build while supplementing with creatine will never disappear as long as you keep working out. After you quit creatine, you can expect the water retention in your muscles to return to baseline, and the puffiness/fluffiness and bloating to disappear.
Creatine is also safe to be taken long-term as long as you don’t overdose and keep supplementing in appropriate amounts.
Side Effects
Creatine is a safe supplement, but as every body is unique, everyone experiences things differently. There have been side effects reported from consuming creatine. Let’s discuss what they are and what to expect from supplementing with this compound:
- Weight gain because of water retention
- Dizziness
- Nausea and vomiting
- Diarrhea
- Excessive sweating
- Kidney failure
The key to safety is to supplement with creatine adequately time-wise and in normal doses. These side effects are caused by over-supplementing, and it is very important not to take high doses.
Lastly, if you have any existing gastrointestinal issues, consult with a healthcare provider to ensure creatine or any other supplement you plan on taking is safe for consumption.
Conclusion
In conclusion, creatine does cause weight gain, but not all weight gain is bad. Creatine doesn’t increase body fat levels. It increases water retention in muscle cells and promotes muscle mass growth as you work out consistently and eat a healthy, protein-rich diet.
Creatine is not a miracle drug, and you should not expect to gain 10 pounds of lean muscle in a week. As you start supplementing with creatine, you will experience sudden weight gain in the first week. Creatine can also cause a little bloating and puffiness/fluffiness.
Creatine is very good for endurance, strength building, and athletic performance. As you supplement and regularly work out, you will be able to increase the weights lifted and push through those last reps.