Will You Lose Weight After Stopping Creatine

Creatine is without a doubt the most successful and widely used bodybuilding supplement of all time. It’s been proven time and again to enhance power, strength, athletic performance, and lean body mass. Creatine has even been shown to improve cognitive function too.

Creatine is a substance naturally occurring in red meat and produced by the human body. It’s created from three amino acids (glycine, arginine, and methionine).[1, 2]

Chemically known as α-methyl guanidine-acetic acid, creatine is primarily stored (about 95%) in skeletal muscle tissue in the form of phosphocreatine. The remaining 5% is stored in your liver, kidneys, and brain. How much creatine your body stores at any given time is based on a few factors[1]:

I Wish I Knew This When I Started Lifting (honest Thoughts)

The simplest unit of cellular energy is a molecule called adenosine triphosphate. You probably know this molecule by its more common name ATP.

The more ATP your muscle cells can store, the more quickly they can regenerate it and continue powering your muscles during training.[3]

In order for a cell to get energy from ATP, it must first break the larger ATP molecule into several smaller ones. During this process, several byproducts are generated which your body can recycle to generate more ATP. The byproduct we’re most interested in with respect to creatine, is adenosine diphosphate (ADP).

How Long Does It Take For Creatine To Work?

When you ingest creatine, it binds to a phosphate molecule and your body then stores it in the form of phosphocreatine. During the ATP regeneration process, creatine donates its phosphate group to ADP, transforming it into the energy behemoth that is ATP.[4] This ultimately increases your muscles’ ability to perform at a high level for longer periods of time before fatiguing.

Unfortunately, the body’s natural creatine stores (i.e. without supplementation) are pretty low[5], and once they become depleted, your ability to rapidly replenish ATP goes downhill pretty quickly. That’s when your muscles start turning to glucose and/or fatty acids for ATP production.

With greater creatine reserves in your muscles, you have significantly more efficient energy production and ATP regeneration, which leads to improvements in[7, 8, 9]:

Truth About Creatine 'helping' Weight Loss

In other words, supplementing with creatine enables you to move more weight for more reps, which provides a greater training stimulus for your muscles, ultimately giving them a reason to grow! As a result of the increased workload, and provided you're consuming a calorie surplus, you will build muscle and increase strength.

The second mechanism by which creatine enhances muscle growth is that it increases the water content of muscle cells[10], which causes an expansion of the muscle cell. You body interprets this expansion as a “threat” of sorts to the cell’s survival and doubles down by reinforcing the structure of the cell. This leads to increased size and strength.

Together, these mechanisms enable you to train longer and bang out more reps while staving off fatigue. Ultimately, you’re accomplishing more work during your training sessions, and in the presence of a surplus of calories, you will “make gains” and increase muscle growth.

What Happens When You Stop Taking Creatine?

Now, let’s say you’ve been supplementing with creatine for a while and for whatever reason you decide to stop using creatine. The inevitable question is...

If you choose to stop creatine (which there is no need to do, barring medical issues), you may notice a slight decrease in muscle fullness along with some decline in performance, strength, and stamina. However, you will by no means lose muscle or lose your gains unless you eat at a dramatic deficit or take a long hiatus from training.

Remember, the muscle you gained was a result of improvements you made in performance and eating a surplus of calories. Creatine doesn’t actually build muscle or create it. It simply helps you to perform more work during training.

Does We Lose Fat After Stopping Creatine?

However, you may notice less muscle fullness (due to reduced water retention) as well as a slight drop off in performance (due to lower stores of creatine in the muscle).

The main reason individuals cycle compounds is to give their body a break as well as restore normal hormone production and ease the burden on vital internal organs, such as the liver. This is especially true when discussing the topic of anabolic steroids, which downregulate natural testosterone production, place unnecessary stress on the liver, and can lead to permanent shut down.

But, don’t make that assumption with creatine. While it does reduce natural creatine production in the body[12], supplementing with creatine is actually a very good thing.

Creatine For Weight Loss: Does It Help?

Aside from the slew of performance and cognitive benefits of creatine, supplementing with it also reduces the burden on the body to synthesize creatine, which is quite taxing, and should you stop taking creatine, your body resumes its normal rate of production.[13]

Creatine is a saturation-based ergogenic, meaning that you need to take it consistently and continually to see its benefits. It does not offer any acute benefits, as say, caffeine or citrulline does.

As such, simply consume 5 grams per day of creatine and in a couple weeks time you will start seeing the benefits, or, if you want to accelerate things a bit, you can take 20 grams per day for 5 to 7 days to “load” your muscles with creatine. After that first week, you can lower to a “maintenance” dose of 5 grams per day.

Creatine Weight Gain: Separating Fact From Fiction

If you really want to get the most out of creatine, you might want to take it post workout and without any caffeine, as some research indicates consuming creatine with caffeine inhibits absorption.[14]

Creatine is the most studied, proven, and time-tested supplement in the history of sports nutrition. No matter if you’re an elite endurance athlete, competitive powerlifter, aspiring bodybuilder, or casual gym rat, if you’re not supplementing with creatine, you’re seriously missing out.Results-driven supplements are great, but one of the biggest fears many lifters have is losing all their muscle gains once they stop taking them. Creatine, a beloved product in the strength and conditioning world, is one of those supplements.

It's great when you're taking it daily, but what happens when you stop? Are your results gone within a few weeks? Or, does your body hold on to the gains you made when taking creatine?

Creatine Facts: How And Why You Should Use It

Creatine is a naturally occurring compound stored in skeletal muscle in the form of creatine phosphate. Additionally, smaller amounts are found in the brain and testes.

Without supplementing with creatine, the average person will consume 1-2 grams of creatine daily, primarily found in red meat and fish¹. In addition, another 1-2 grams of your own creatine is synthesized internally through the amino acids arginine, glycine, and methionine during natural creatine production.

Before supplementing, a person's natural creatine stores are around 100 to 120 mmol per kg of body weight, equating to their creatine levels being just 60-80% full. This means there is certainly room for more creatine stores, ideally leading to more muscle gains as you tackle your 7-day workout split.

Why A 5 Pound Weight Gain Isn't The End Of The World

Creatine phosphate is used by the ATP-CP/Phophagen metabolic system to help resynthesize the high-energy compound ATP. Known as adenosine triphosphate (triphosphate= 3 phosphates), ATP is the body's energy currency and is used to supply energy for a host of reactions, processes, and muscle contractions.

During high-intensity activities such as lifting weights and HIIT workouts, the body requires ATP fast to fuel the muscles. To provide energy, ATP goes through a reaction in which one of its phosphate molecules breaks off. This creates energy along with another compound known as adenosine diphosphate (diphopshate= 2 phosphates).

At this point, creatine phosphate is used to provide one of its phosphate groups to ADP, thus becoming another molecule of ATP.

Weight Loss Statistics 2023

The majority of people's creatine levels are below their maximum levels. This can be the result of numerous factors, yet a person's diet often plays a large part.

Regardless, taking one of the best creatine supplements fills these creatine levels to 100% full. As a result, the body is able to better withstand strenuous exercise as well as perform more work.

People usually see rapid weight gain during the first month of supplementing, which equates to 1-2kg. After that, the weight gain becomes less drastic and evens out. 

Does Creatine Help You Lose Weight? (what Science Says)

The benefits of a creatine supplement do not occur until the creatine level begins to rise. While you can just take a small dose of 3 grams daily, this could take an entire month.

This is why when someone first starts taking creatine, it's recommended they follow a loading protocol. By doing so, they are able to get their stores full quickly and start reaping the benefits.

Most sports researchers will suggest a 5-7 day period in which a person takes 20-25 grams per day². This can be broken up into smaller doses as well.

Does Creatine Help You Lose Weight: The Complete Guide

Many people are concerned that creatine causes weight gain. We will go over this more below but for now, yes. This is due to more muscle mass along with water retention.

There are many great supplements available to help you burn fat, but creatine is not one of them - at least not directly. While fat loss and an improved body fat percentage usually accompany creatine ingestion, and we do recommend taking creatine while cutting, this is due to higher work output and diet.

Above we spoke of how taking the supplements boosts your creatine levels. That's what happens physiologically, regardless of whether you're taking

What Happens If You Stop Taking Creatine: Results And Side Effects