#34: The Truth About Creatine

Hey Fitness Friends,

I have a ton of people that ask me questions about creatine, so thought I would do a newsletter talking about some of the basics.

If you’ve ever wondered what the benefits are of creatine, if you should be taking it, or if there are any drawbacks, I got you covered this week.

Weekly Action Point

❤️ This week, let’s make a point of doing something for someone else - A random act of kindness ❤️ 

In my newsletter last week I talked about mental health, and if you remember, one of the things I said you could do to improve your mental health is to do something for someone else.

The key here: doing something for someone else without expecting anything in return.

If you aren’t sure what you could do, here’s a little list to hopefully spark some ideas for you:

• Buy the person’s coffee behind you in line

• Go out of your way to compliment a stranger (sincerely)

• Cook dinner for a friend

• Give your spouse a massage

• Leave a kind note on a random car

• Give a meal to a homeless person

You could really do anything, doesn’t have to be something big. But pick something and do it one time this week :)

Watch/Listen to this podcast

Before I start talking about creatine, I want to recommend that anyone curious about creatine supplementation should watch this video:

This is the video version of the podcast, if you just want the audio version, you can find it by looking up “Why All Women Should Take Creatine” wherever you listen to podcasts.

In this podcast, they are more specifically talking to women, but they give phenomenal insight about creatine that is useful regardless if you are a man or a woman. I know most people don’t care when I link a podcast, but do yourself a favor and check this one out if you’re curious about creatine.

They articulate it much better than I ever could. But with that, let’s jump into my thoughts.

What is creatine?

Creatine is a natural compound that plays a huge role in energy production via the regeneration of ATP, which is basically like the “currency” of energy used in your muscles.

It’s actually produced by your body (primarily in the liver) and found in certain foods such as red meat, tuna, salmon, and cod.

Even though it’s made in our body and is consumed in many common foods, I absolutely believe that if you have muscle-building or fat-loss goals you should be supplementing with additional creatine.

And let me tell you why.

Research studies have shown that ingesting roughly 5g of creatine per day has a wide variety of benefits for the body and brain. (Here is my source if you like reading scientific papers).

To consume 5g of creatine via whole foods, you would need to eat around 2.5 pounds of steak per day, which is outrageous. No one eats that much steak every day, which is one of the reasons I recommend creatine supplementation.

Creatine is the most studied supplement on the market. There are over 500 peer-reviewed studies published on creatine that have shown a variety of benefits. It’s a pretty long list, but here are some of the highlights:

• Performance enhancements with high-intensity exercise

• Increase in muscular size and lean muscle mass (and having more muscle improves your metabolism, usually also leading to fat loss)

• Strength improvements

• Cognitive benefits

The list of benefits for creatine supplementation is lengthy, and the cool part is that the list of drawbacks is almost nonexistent.

Creatine causes your muscles to pull in and retain more water, essentially improving muscular hydration. This is good - intracellular water in muscles is actually lean mass. If you were to take an Inbody or DEXA scan, it would show that water as an increase in muscle mass.

However, that means you have to make sure you are drinking enough water throughout the day or you could be more prone to symptoms of dehydration.

Nothing crazy, you just have to drink a normal amount of water and you’ll have no issues.

Outside of that, creatine supplementation is regarded as safe for healthy individuals.

How to take creatine

So I’ve said that I think you should be taking creatine if you have muscle-building or fat-loss goals, but what does that look like?

The type of creatine you want to buy is called creatine monohydrate.

Other types of creatine are shown to be less effective. And creatine monohydrate should be the only ingredient on the ingredients list.

Some brands put a whole bunch of other things into their creatine for marketing purposes. If every company is selling creatine monohydrate, they try to put other things in there to market their product as better than their competitors.

The other ingredients are usually bologne, which is why I always recommend opting for one that is pure creatine monohydrate.

Here is the specific brand that I use. This is the cheapest one I can find on the market.

This one comes as a powder that I just drink in a glass of water in the morning.

They also sell creatine gummies if that interests you. The gummies are much more expensive, so I don’t personally use them. But, here is a brand I’ve heard only good things about. (obviously, in the gummies there is more than one ingredient because they have all the things that go into creating a gummy, but outside of those, this brand is pure creatine monohydrate)

Hopefully, that answers some questions you had about creatine.

The big takeaway is that you should be taking it because there are loads of benefits and essentially no drawbacks.

If you have more questions about it, feel free to shoot me a message and I’d be happy to chat about it.

Have a great week!

Ben

Ben’s Best

🥗 Food for the week: one pot shwarma rice.

cheffinwithzach

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I came across this guy like a week ago and am absolutely loving him. I scrolled through almost all of his page, he has tons of great recipes.