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Creatine Weight Gain
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How Does Creatine Help You Gain Weight
There is a very good reason why creatine exploded onto the market the way that it did in the early 1990's. When you use creatine correctly you gain weight quickly in the first three weeks when using it for the first time. But exactly how does creatine help you gain weight is something that we need to examine a bit more closely.
When taking creatine in any of the many different forms that one can now choose to take the supplement you will first gain water-mass. Your increased water retention is the weight that you see on the scale and not muscle. Muscle simply does not grow that fast it is as simple as that.
Creatine first needs to get into your bloodstream after over 60% of the creatine you have taken is destroyed by the stomach acid. When it gets to the bloodstream it will eventually go to the muscle tissue where it gets stores as phosphocreatine.
This is what your muscle will use when it needs energy to complete a high intensity workout. The phosphocreatine is stored for the first energy that your muscles use which is adenosine triphosphate, or ATP. But this energy is completely depleted after only a few seconds.
It is only once this happens that the phosphocreatine is oxidized in order to provide the additional ATP that your muscles require to complete the movement or set. Your weight gain in the first week will be water when taking creatine.
But it should be clear here that Creatine not only builds strength and muscle but also has a way of restricting the built in self-protection mechanism in the muscle to stop or slow down muscle growth because of the body's natural limitations on muscle growth and it does this by reducing the amount of Myostatin that is released in the muscles.
At the risk of repeating the point mentioned above most of the weight gain that you get in the first week or two is only water retention and not muscle. You should already have a diet and an exercise training regime all set up before you take creatine supplements.
The reason is that just taking creatine alone is not enough to make muscle your muscles grow. It is only a solid hypertrophy workout regime plus a sensible diet that will enable muscle growth, there is no doubt about it that creatine can help to speed up your strength and muscle growth.
Creatine Weight Gain