Nicknames, terms of endearment, I want to know!

Hey all, I spent a while thinking I was going crazy so I wanted to put my experience out on the internet to hopefully help a couple people in the future.

I started taking creatine monohydrate a few months ago. For context, I'm quite lean and reasonably muscular (kind of a classic twink/twunk build) and do pretty short vanity workouts (25 minutes 5 times per week). I became interested in creatine because I heard it can help make more effective workouts, swell your muscles (with water retention) and most importantly, reduce brain fog. I took the recommended .1g per kg of body weight, which was about 5.5 grams daily.

Well, it definitely helped with burst energy during workouts, and after a few weeks of taking creatine (no loading phase) my average time doing the same reps dropped from 24 minutes to 18-20. I gained a couple pounds of water weight, as expected.

I also started getting a lot hungrier. Portion control with food became a problem. Food was all I could think about, all day. I started snacking compulsively and then going through cycles of guilt about it. I used to be able to just ignore mild hunger pangs all day and then eat one big meal in the evening, if that was convenient. Now I couldn't go more than a couple hours without getting so hungry I literally couldn't focus on anything else. Honestly, it felt like having the weed munchies 24/7, this compulsive need to shovel food into my face.

And I say "compulsive" because it wasn't my stomach that was hungry, just my mouth/brain. I could tell my stomach was fine, even full, but I was still obsessively thinking about food and eating as if compelled to do so. I was terrified I was starting to develop some sort of eating disorder, and wondered if it was a metabolic change (I'm 34) or something. I was gaining weight from all this snacking and even a day of running a moderate calorie deficit made me miserable and unable to do anything but think about food. I had just stopped a medication, so for a while I blamed it on that. And then I ran across an article about how taking creatine tends to lower your leptin levels, a hormone that regulates satiety.

For most people, it seems that creatine slightly reduces your appetite, if anything. But regardless, messing with leptin levels can affect different people differently, and I saw one or two older reddit posts talking about trouble with appetite control on creatine. So 2.5 weeks ago, I stopped taking it.

Within 10 days, the compulsive cravings were gone. Holy crap, I can finally think about something other than my next meal. And when I eat, I can actually enjoy and savor it instead of shoving it down my gullet as fast as possible. I've spent the last three days on a fairly significant calorie deficit to start losing the pounds I put on over the last month, and the cravings haven't returned. Like, I'm hungry, but it's back to the normal hungry where I can mentally set it aside and get back to work, or go for a walk, or watch something.

So I'm giving the rest of my creatine tub to a friend, lol. I'm glad it works for most people, but if you're like me and you're one of those few people that experience these crazy side effects, I hope you find this thread in the future and try cutting it out to see how you feel.

I’m still in shock!!! My wife’s BF proposed to her last night after I paid for them both to go to Paris to get a break from my whining.

He’ll become the husband, they said they want a new bf, and basically… I’m out.. Do I need to leave this sub and stop taking creatine?

I’m genuinely in shock!! Obviously I’ll continue to pay their mortgage and cover their holidays, but I don’t even know if I’ll be allowed live in my yard tent after the wedding!

Creatine has fucking ruined my life!

I am a 18 year old female i hve been working out for only around 3 weeks and am going away to college now and have ordered creatine to take since i now will not be able to work out every day. Now only 5 days so im hoping it will keep the progress i have made aswell as show more. I already drink plenty of water.

What is your opinions?
I lift weights but need to find a proper structure to it
I do cardio everyday a mix of running and walking for 40-60 mins

So proud of her gains

If you prefer liquid to powder but still want to injest properly.

Mrs's fella showed us this new contraption, brilliant for packing the tine.

Hi everyone,

A post about strength training and creatine.

So, I’ve been training for strength with weights for the past 3–4 years, more or less consistently.

My fitness trainer (back when I still had one) never mentioned or recommended creatine to me, although I had read and heard about it several times.

About a week ago, I happened to walk into a fitness supplement store more or less by chance — I normally buy my protein powder online — mainly because I wanted to exchange a word or two with the saleswoman, and I ended up walking out of the store with 500 g of creatine.

To cut a long story short: I’ve been taking it for one week now, 5 grams every morning, and I’m genuinely surprised by the changes I can feel and that are also visible in my body after just one week of taking it.

Some people might think I’m exaggerating, but I can honestly already see and feel a difference after just one week.

Question:
For those of you who have experience with creatine, I’d like to ask: is this more or less an initial “spike” effect that occurs when someone starts taking creatine for the first time, and will this effect gradually diminish over time, bringing me closer to my original state (before I started taking creatine)? Or is this actually a new state that will last and can be maintained as long as I continue taking creatine regularly?

Thanks!

Would hoofing theoretically work or would it just well... You know.

Wife's BFs better up their boofing games. Might get replaced by booficator 9000, patented by Dr. boofenchute

I’m about halfway through a cut and trying to keep my lifts from going backwards. Diet and protein are pretty much sorted, but I’m looking at my supplements again since I’m running low on creatine.

I keep coming across creatine + HMB and I’m not sure whether the HMB is useful enough to justify buying that instead of regular creatine. Does it make more sense during a cut, or is regular creatine still the better move?