For the longest time, I overlooked creatine and never looked into taking it. I associated it with bodybuilders from my days as a fitness competitor. Since becoming a mom, I have been working out to lose postpartum weight and regain lost muscle, but I haven’t wanted to change the way I look dramatically. And I associated creatine with getting jacked for bodybuilding shows. My goal these days is to rebuild my strength since having twins, train consistently, recover well and increase my energy. My core desired feeling, which I chose at the beginning of the year for my health, is vitality. So to be honest, creatine never really made it onto my supplement list. 

I started looking into it more seriously about a year ago, and I realized that a lot of my hesitation came from the way creatine has traditionally been talked about. It was a “men’s supplement” in my mind, even though there wasn’t a particularly good reason for me to think of it that way. Once I actually looked at what creatine does, it started to make a lot more sense to bring it into my supplement stack.

Why I Was Skeptical About Creatine as a Woman

I don’t think I’m alone in having some reservations. Ask women what they think of when they hear “creatine,” and you’ll often hear the same concerns: Won’t I get bulky? Doesn’t it make you gain weight? Won’t I retain water? Those concerns aren’t completely random. Creatine has been marketed for decades primarily to male athletes and bodybuilders, so it’s easy to assume its purpose is to help you become bigger and stronger in a very specific way.

But creatine doesn’t work by changing your hormones or making you more “masculine.” It’s a naturally occurring compound that your body already produces and stores, primarily in your muscles. What changed my perspective was realizing that I didn’t need to go back to my fitness competitor ways to care about muscle performance. If I’m lifting weights, doing yoga, learning how to run again (post multiple organ prolapse surgery), or simply trying to maintain strength as I get older, the way my muscles produce and use energy matters to me.

So, What Does Creatine Actually Do?

The simple science is that creatine helps your muscles regenerate ATP, the energy source they rely on for short, high-intensity efforts. When you’re doing something demanding, let’s say a heavy set of squats, a sprint, or the last few reps of an exercise, your muscles need energy quickly. The real benefit is that creatine helps support that energy system, which can allow you to maintain performance during repeated high-intensity efforts. 

Creatine isn’t building muscle for you while you sit on the couch. It can help you get a little more out of your training, and consistently being able to train harder or perform more repetitions can contribute to strength and muscle gains over time. I wasn’t looking for a shortcut. I was looking for something that could support the workouts I was already doing.

But What About Water Weight?

This was probably my biggest concern when I first started researching creatine. Creatine increases the amount of water stored within muscle cells. That isn’t the same thing as gaining body fat, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll look swollen or “puffy.”

Some people do notice the scale move when they begin taking creatine, particularly during the first few weeks. For me, understanding why that can happen made the number on the scale much less concerning. And to be honest, we’re not focusing on the scale anymore and more on how we feel!

It’s also worth remembering that body weight naturally fluctuates for all kinds of reasons. A small change on the scale doesn’t tell you whether a supplement is working or whether your body composition has changed.

Why I Chose Creatine Monohydrate

Once I decided to try creatine, the next question was which kind. There are plenty of options: creatine monohydrate, creatine HCl, buffered creatine, creatine ethyl ester and others. Supplement labels can make it seem as though you need a more advanced or specialized version to get the best results. I landed on creatine monohydrate because it’s the form that has been studied most extensively, and it has a long track record for supporting strength and exercise performance. I didn’t see a compelling reason to choose a more complicated or expensive version when the basic form had such a strong evidence base.

I also wanted a product with a straightforward ingredient list. Since my multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2014, I’ve been very careful about which supplements I incorporate into my routine. If I’m adding another supplement to my routine, I want to know exactly what I’m taking. That’s one reason I chose Naked Nutrition Creatine Monohydrate. It’s simply creatine monohydrate, without a long list of additional ingredients that I don’t really need.

Do You Need to Do a Creatine Loading Phase?

This was another thing that initially made creatine seem more complicated than it needed to be. You may have heard about a loading phase, which typically involves taking around 20 grams of creatine per day, divided into several smaller doses, for about five to seven days. The idea is to saturate your muscle stores more quickly. But you don’t have to do this.

Taking around 3–5 grams per day will also gradually increase your muscle creatine stores. It just takes longer to reach full saturation. I prefer the simpler approach. I’m much more interested in a supplement routine that I can actually maintain than one that requires me to remember multiple doses throughout the day. I prefer consistent small step habit stacking. 

What I Actually Noticed

One thing I’ve learned about supplements is that I don’t want to promise myself some dramatic transformation before I’ve even started taking them. Creatine isn’t going to suddenly make your workouts effortless or change your body overnight. The potential benefits are much more subtle than that. You may notice that you can squeeze out another repetition, maintain your performance across sets, or gradually handle a little more work in your training. Those small differences can add up.

Some findings are promising, particularly in situations involving high cognitive demand or sleep deprivation, but this is an area where I’d rather keep watching the research than make big promises. That’s something I appreciate about creatine in general: there is already a substantial body of research behind its use for exercise, while researchers are still exploring what else it might be able to do.

I have tested taking a higher dosage on nights when the twins have woken us up multiple times a night. I am impressed with my cognitive ability to function at work the next day so I’m excited to see more prominent studies around that! 

A Few Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting

First, you don’t need to overcomplicate it. You don’t need a special timing strategy, an expensive formulation, or a complicated loading protocol if you don’t want one. Taking it consistently is much more important than finding the “perfect” time of day.

Second, don’t judge it by the number on the scale alone. If you notice a little weight gain after starting creatine, remember that increased water stored in your muscles can contribute to that change. It’s not the same thing as gaining body fat.

And finally, give it time. Creatine works by increasing your muscle’s creatine stores. It’s not a pre-workout that you take 20 minutes before training and immediately feel. If you’re evaluating whether it’s worth taking, think in terms of weeks and months rather than a single workout.

So pick a time of day to take it, whether that’s before your workout or after and just stay consistent. 

So, Is Creatine Worth Considering for Women?

For me, the biggest shift was realizing that I had dismissed creatine based more on its image than on what it actually does. Women don’t need a different kind of creatine because we’re women. We have the same basic energy systems in our muscles, and creatine is something our bodies already produce naturally. If you’re strength training, doing high-intensity exercise, or simply interested in supporting your ability to maintain muscle and strength, creatine monohydrate is worth trying. 

It’s one of the few supplements where the evidence is strong enough that I can understand why it has remained so popular for so long. And honestly, that’s what I was looking for in the first place: not another trendy supplement, but something simple, well-researched, and easy to make part of my routine.