Is creatine for me: how will I know.
About a week. You won't feel anything "distinct" but if you respond to creatine via increased muscle force output, then you should be able to continue your LP and maybe feel an advantage in the gym. There are plenty of other health reasons to take creatine so even if you're a non responder, I'd take it anyway.If I start, how long will it take until I start seeing performance increases? What will that look like / how will I know I respond to creatine?
At your size, you don't have to load it and you could get away with 3-5g/day and see what happens. More than that might cause some initial gut distress if you're sensitive to it. On the other hand, you can saturate the muscle faster with a 2day 20g/day load, and then go to 5g, but it's not a crazy difference in saturation of skeletal muscle creatine (like 3% IIRC).No "loading", right? Just start taking 5g/day? 10g on workout days?
0-??? lbs. I don't lose or gain any water on creatine. I think a lot of it is people either consciously or subconsciously change their dietary intake of carbohydrates, salt, and water and there may be a transient fluctuation in water retention, which normalizes. On the other hand, you might retain a bit of water but it's hard to say for sure. Some literature says that the initial water gain is permanent due to increased skeletal muscle tissue, which is 80% water. Complete washout of creatine is ~7-14 days. I wouldn't quit creatine before any athletic event tho...How much water weight should I expect to gain? (after SL, I'm going to go on a cut for a 180 mile bike race.) And if I stop, how fast will it go away?
