Who says creatine is for bodybuilders or men only? When used right, creatine can be a great supplement that helps you move closer to your fitness goals.
What most people don’t know, is that these fitness goals don’t have to be all about bulking and putting on huge muscle mass. It can also be helpful for regular people who want to take care of their bodies, build some strength and look better and leaner.
Let’s break down what is to be noticed as you’re starting your journey with creatine, so you know what to expect. That being said, your results will be hugely dependent on other parts of your day, like your exercise routine, protein intake, sugar consumption, and getting enough sleep, in addition to several other factors. Nonetheless, I will be laying out the average results women should expect when taking creatine, due to the research and the anecdotes of people I have polled or worked with.
Before we start I want you to make sure not to start any supplements or modify any parts of your diet without consulting your doctor first.
What To Expect On Day 1
You shouldn’t notice anything different on the first day. Creatine needs time to get its reserves filled up within the muscles. And that can’t happen right away. It needs between one to three weeks for you to notice a difference, depending on how large or small you decide your daily dose would be, as we’ll discuss more a bit later.
One of the most important things you must keep in mind as you’re starting out with creatine is the importance of consistency. As said earlier, you should aim to give the muscles enough creatine and then provide them with a maintenance dose, to keep things going.
What To Expect After One Week
After one week of creatine supplementation, you should either be at the climax of the creatine boost or still on your way there. This depends on whether you started with a maintenance dose of 3-5g per day or if you went with the loading dose of 20-25gm per day for 5-7 days.
In the latter scenario, at the end of the week, you should be feeling stronger during your workouts and be able to do a couple more reps than usual.
As for your body, a small percentage of people said they noticed any difference during the first week of creatine.
9.7%, to be exact, of those I polled, said they notice a difference at the end of their first week on creatine. The good news is, all of them said the noted difference was for the better.
On the other hand, if you went with the maintenance dose from the off-go, the creatine reserve within your muscle should still be filling up, and in most cases, that means no effects are to be felt or seen yet.
What To Expect After One Month
One month later is the first actual point in time you can take a step back and take a look at your progress, especially if you went the “loading doses” route.
In this case, your workout performance during the past three weeks should have gone up, as you notice more endurance in your muscles in addition to more volume due to more water retention in your muscles.
On the other hand, if you started with a maintenance dose, you’ll have just recently filled your muscles with creatine and, from here on out, you’ll start to notice the differences we have been talking about.
What Expect After 365 Days
Taking creatine for a year is the point where more than 93% of those I polled admitted it has positively influenced their fitness journey.
Most people I talk to can’t compare anything else to creatine especially when it comes to more endurance and better-looking muscles.
Let’s talk more about that along with many other benefits of creatine you should start noticing when you commit to it as a woman in the long run.
Benefits Of Creatine For Women On The Long Run
You’ll Be Less Sore After Workouts
You probably heard the sentence, “If you’re not sore, you have not worked out hard enough.” And it may have some merit to it, but the thing is if there’s something that makes us suffer a bit less, why be more cavalier than we should?
That being said, I wouldn’t recommend taking creatine to almost anybody if this was its only benefit, but since it is just a very relieving plus that comes with the package, how can you not love it for that even more?
And do not expect to not feel any soreness in your muscles after your workouts. Creatine is not magic. Like with endurance and volume, it just gives you a nice push that you’ll appreciate.
You Might Start To Feel Bloated
This is by far the most experienced side effect of creatine among all the people I have polled. The problem here is that bloating might negatively impact your fitness journey by a bigger margin than the positive impact of creatine.
Bloating can make you want to change the components of your diet to feel better, make you eat less or more than you should, and can disturb the absorption process in your intestines leading to so many of the micro- and macronutrients going to waste.
In this case, creatine is hindering your progress more than it is helping you. Not to mention how unpleasant it is to be bloated all the time.
Anecdotally, and this may be something you want to try after consulting with your doctor, those who got bloated using creatine monohydrate felt a lot better when they switched to HCL creatine.
It’ll Make Lowering Your Carb Intake Easier
If your goal is to mainly lose weight or to lower your carb intake for whatever reason, but feel like you need these carbs to perform better at the gym, taking creatine can be some sort of replacement for these carbs.
In this case, you probably won’t get the added bonus of creatine when it comes to more power and endurance, but you’ll also not be feeling as bad as you would if you only cut carbs out.
A smart solution that can let you have the best of both worlds is to smartly schedule your carb intake, by placing it around your workout and moving to eliminate it during the rest of the day.
You’ll Look Leaner
Scientifically, creatine does this due to the fact that: 1) You’re exercising harder because of it, so you will be burning more fat. You’ll also be putting on some muscle as a result, leading to a nice recomposition when paired with the proper nutrition and rest.
And 2) It attracts more water to the muscle, which leads to the muscles looking leaner.
Your Muscle Can Develop That Sweet Pop
One of the biggest reasons that attract people to creatine is that nice pop of muscle they see on their friends’ bodies after taking creatine.
This is especially cool for women since it gives you that clean and natural pop that adds more definition to the muscle without it seeming bulkier.
It Can Speed Up The Fat Burning Progress
As creatine helps you endure more exercise and longer workouts, it will lead to burning more calories. So creatine is not just for you if you were a woman who wants to bulk.
However, even if you decide to put on some good amount of muscle, you’ll be even more able to burn fat more easily down the road, since more muscles lead to a faster calorie-burning body.
It Helps Grow Your Abs And Cover Lower Belly Fat
We have already discussed how creatine does both seperately, but when these two effects combine they can fix one of the biggest weight loss dilemmas for women, which is the lower belly fat and the six abs (or lack therof).
And as you might have already experienced, if you lose some belly fat, your abs will start to show more, and if you build some abs, they tend to cover up some of the fat around the belly.
However, achieving both with the help of creatine can make you look twice as good and feel twice as powerful.
Happy lifting from your doctor friend, Nabeel.