Does Creatine Cause Weight Gain and Water Retention?

Question

If I decide to take creatine, my biggest concern is about weight gain and water retention. Is this a normal side effect?

Answer 1

Creatine weight gain and water retention are commonplace, yet these aspects are actually not that much more serious than many would suspect. A small percentage of the population may weigh about 1kg more than usual, and they have this extra weight due to water inside the muscles. A side effect of this kind however is not common for everybody.

Comments

Thanks, Conor, for that explanation of creatine's benefits and possible drawbacks.  I've been using it for a couple of years, (on an eight weeks, on, two weeks off schedule,) mainly to try to get some muscle on my legs.  It hasn't had much, if any, noticeable effect, but at eighty what can I expect?  I've not noticed any downsides at all.  However, if the Jolly GCN Giant uses 5g per day, I, (short and skinny), should only take 3g.  I'll try that.

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Like you mentioned I could feel the jump in sprint power, but on 2+ hour rides I was having severe leg cramping issues. So I stopped taking it, and it took a little bit to get out of my system,  but eventually my power that I gained in the sprint came back. For me it was a great Kickstarter to getting the power in my legs, but long term use it did not make sense. Also I put on 13 lbs in three months while on it of both muscle and water weight. After cutting the water weight over a month I dropped 7 pounds.

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I have been using it for 3.5 months. In the first month, I did not gain much weight but by the end of 3rd month, I put 3-4 kg moving up from 81/82 to 84/85. However, on the mirror I look leaner. I do not think it is the muscle gain though as I would surely know if it was muscle (I doing bodybuilding for many years). Some sources says the water is retained in the cells rather than under the skin, so it could be the case that the water in my body is accumulated in the cells rather than under the skin, explaining the leaner look. I did not notice any endurance performance improvement but did not do controlled short effort test either. However there is a very hilly (lots of ups and downs) course that I do in Bristol and despite of my weight gain I did not notice any performance lost. Occasionally I get PRs on short (<5min) power outputs which might suggest that creating is effective in short power outputs but it could be also due to the training. Hard to say really. I will continue to use the creatine at least for a year and see how it goes. By the way I am using 2.5gr daily with no pre-load phase. We also take creating from meat and fish, so it is not like that we will not have it if we do not take it in a supplement form.

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Creatine works great but will cause you to gain weight. As a weenie that’s probably not a trade you’re willing to make.

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Gained 4kg on it. And people noticed the additional weight gain. 10sec neuromuscular intervals now really feel like "threshold" so it kinda works, but that feeling is also gone in an instant. Interestingly I feel that multiple neuromuscular intervals do make you less fatigued especially if you then continue into a long threashold interval. The initial recovery at the start of the threshold interval from the previous high intensity is not as painful as it used to.