How Much Creatine Should I Take? Dose by Body Weight
How much creatine should you take? 3–5 g a day for most lifters. Enter your weight for your daily dose, an optional loading phase and when your muscles fill up.
A month on creatine and nothing changed? The diagnosis finds why.
Monohydrate is the form the research uses. Most scoops hold 3 or 5 g; check your label. If you have kidney disease or take medication for it, ask your doctor first.
Sources: ISSN position stand, Kreider et al. 2017; Hultman et al. 1996 (loading vs 3 g/day); Burke et al. 2003 (vegetarians).
A month in and nothing has changed? Find out why- Published
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Take 3–5 g of creatine monohydrate a day; lifters over about 100 kg (220 lb) who train hard may need up to 10 g. If you want full muscle stores within a week, load first with about 0.3 g per kg of bodyweight a day, split into four doses, for 5–7 days. Enter your weight above for your exact numbers and see how fast each approach fills your muscles.
How much creatine should I take a day?
3–5 g a day keeps muscle stores full for most people, and larger athletes in hard training may need 5–10 g, according to the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN, 2017). The same position stand calls creatine monohydrate the most effective supplement for adding high-intensity capacity and lean mass during training.
More than your dose does not build more muscle once stores are full; the excess is simply excreted.
Should you do a creatine loading phase?
Only if you want results sooner; both routes end at the same place. 20 g a day for six days raised muscle creatine by about 20%, and 3 g a day reached the same level in 28 days (Hultman et al., 1996). Loading also brings on the water weight faster: about 0.5–1 litre in the first week, which shows on the scale (ISSN, 2017).
Does creatine dosage depend on body weight?
For loading, yes: about 0.3 g per kg, so roughly 24 g a day at 80 kg and 33 g at 110 kg. For the daily dose, only loosely: 3–5 g covers most lifters, and the 5–10 g range applies to large athletes. That is why the calculator gives a range, not a precise gram count.
When should you take creatine?
Whenever you will remember it every day. Taking it with a meal containing carbohydrate, or carbohydrate and protein, has been reported to increase how much the muscle retains (ISSN, 2017). Take it on rest days too: stores fill from the daily total, not from the timing around workouts.
Is it safe to take creatine every day?
For healthy people, yes. The ISSN found no compelling evidence that short- or long-term creatine monohydrate use harms healthy individuals, and weight gain is the side effect most consistently reported (ISSN, 2017). If you have kidney disease or take medication for your kidneys, ask your doctor first.
Do vegetarians need more creatine?
Not a bigger dose, but they usually see a bigger effect. Vegetarians started with lower muscle creatine (117 vs 130 mmol/kg) and gained more creatine and lean tissue on the same supplement in an 8-week trial (Burke et al., 2003).
Creatine helps you do a little more work; it cannot fix a program, a diet or sleep that is holding you back. If a month in nothing has changed, find out what is limiting you.
FAQ
Is 10 g of creatine a day too much?
Not harmful for healthy people, but more than most need. It mainly makes sense for large lifters in hard training.
Do I need to cycle creatine?
No. Stores fall back to baseline about a month after you stop, and no break is required.
How long does creatine take to work?
About a week with loading, three to four weeks without. See how long creatine takes to work for the full timeline.
Is creatine HCl better than monohydrate?
Not shown to be. Monohydrate is the form nearly all of the research uses, and it is the cheapest.
Written and maintained by LiftDecode. Training and nutrition education for healthy adults, not medical advice — if you have a health condition or an injury, talk to a professional who can examine you.