Is Creatine Bloating a Thing?

Hey!

Anyone experience of having creatine in breakfast? I’m currently taking 23 grams creatine in breakfast shake. But this is causing bloating ?? Or you can say water weight.

According to an article I read, we can skip the loading phase. However, By lowering the consumption can help to maintain the it’s level but this would take 3 to 4 weeks to saturate the muscles with creatine. I wanted it to work faster than that time period for lifting, I switched to Madcow when I started taking it and don’t want to miss lift for next 6 weeks. This was the main reason I started taking a high amount of it.

However, I find this a suggestion about changing the bulking diet which may be the cause of bloating. So my question is should I change my diet (may be switching to keto with moderate crabs) or is there anyway to skip this puffy looking part without changing the intake of creatine? My few mates told me to try and change the intake time. Does changing time work?

Please share your personal experience.

You’re taking in 23g of creatine one one sitting daily? How many days are you doing this?

I’m new to creatine, but 23g sounds like a whole heck of a lot. Perhaps that is the underlying motivation for @T3hPwnisher’s question.

I doubt there are very many people who have taken creatine as long as I have.
When Bill Philips introduced it as Phosphagen I mail ordered some, and never stopped taking it. If I recall it was recommended to pre-load at 10g per day for 10 days and then take at 5g per day…

About 10 years after I had been taking creatine I began hearing how dangerous it was. I heard the bloat concerns a few years later. I never got any bloat that I noticed. I took right through contests where I was getting cut. No bloat that I noticed.

IMO, drop to 5g per day and clean up your diet some. Your body makes its own creatine. You’re taking some creatine supplementation to get to maximum benefit of putting fluid in your muscles. Without loading you will get to the “loaded” level in a month.

This is basically the same protocol I have read from recent recommendations/articles related to creatine loading and maintenance.

Honestly, keep it simple and get on with it: Take 5g per day every day for life and never think about it again. The rest is largely minutiae.

That said, there seems to some extra benefits to taking it after training:

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As I recall Bill Philips recommended taking creatine when your muscle glycogen was the lowest (e.g., post workout). That is why he included dextrose in the Phosphagen. The dextrose would spike your insulin and better drive the creatine into the muscles which were starving for sugar.