creatine

Dauphinee87
Dauphinee87 Posts: 4
in Health and Weight Loss
I am a 25 year old female, I weigh 155lbs. I have been watching calories and exercising with a heart monitor to make sure my workouts are effective, but have yet to loss any weight. I am thinking about adding creatine to my diet, but am unsure if that is a good idea.

*consuming 1400 cals
*working out 40mins a day burning about 500 cals
*taking green tea supplements

Please HELP!

Replies

  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,430 MFP Moderator
    It's quite possible you are not eating enough calories, Generally, since you are close to a normal weight, it may be better to eat around 1700 calories or more. Adding creatine will just help store water in your muscle and allow you to push harder during your workouts. Also, I would doubt you are burning 500 calories a workout. I am a guy and 40 lbs heavier and it would be difficult to burn that much. But it really doesn't matter how much you burn because the more you burn the more you need to eat.

    How tall are you and how many days do you workout. Also, what is your workout routine?
  • Dauphinee87
    Dauphinee87 Posts: 4
    I am about 5'5'' , I workout 5-6 times a week, and I do 5min warm up, 20mins strength training, run 1.25 mi, 5min cool-down, and 5min stretching. I use my food diary and add the additional cals it says I have earned according to my work-outs.
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    I doubt you're eating enough. How long have you been trying to lose weight?
  • Dauphinee87
    Dauphinee87 Posts: 4
    Since Jan. 10th
  • albertabeefy
    albertabeefy Posts: 1,169 Member
    creatine doesn't aid in weight loss...

    First, it occurs naturally in the body - so you don't need to supplement it anyway... Secondly, it has some effects in increasing muscle mass - but has nothing to do with weight loss.
  • albertabeefy
    albertabeefy Posts: 1,169 Member
    I doubt you're eating enough. How long have you been trying to lose weight?
    ^ This.

    As a 25 year old female who's 5'5 ... even if you were only 120lbs your BMR would be nearly 1400 calories. Although many people doubt the existence of "starvation mode" when it comes to dieting, there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that it exists.

    Eating less than your TDEE is essential for weight-loss, but eating less than your BMR is usually NOT good. It often results in both weight-loss stalls and low energy levels.
  • Tysonlovesweights
    Tysonlovesweights Posts: 139 Member
    if you are just punching the exercise into MFP to find out the cals burned, you are probably way over estimating. Do your run on a treadmill at the gym where you can enter your age and weight, the treadmill will monitor calories burned, check that against what the mfp diary says, and adjust accordingly, the stats mfp had when i was doing cardio were way off, and way too high. I remember one day it said i burned 1000 calories in 45 mins on the eliptical trainer, but the machine had said less than 400!
  • callybobuffalo
    callybobuffalo Posts: 7
    Creatine is hard on your kidneys if you don't take it the correct way. I would highly recommend getting some professional advice prior to using.
  • Dauphinee87
    Dauphinee87 Posts: 4
    I work-out at home on a treadmill and use a wristwatch heart monitor to calculate my burn. I check my heart rate every 5mins from beginning to end of work-out.
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,430 MFP Moderator
    Based on your stats, I would actually suggest eating around 1750 calories. That will put you around 20% less than TDEE. Now this is total calories, not net calories. In the case I ran numbers, you would aim to eat this daily. I also suggest around 40% carbs, 40% protein and 20% fats.


    I would make a suggestion that you do 3 days of weight training and then 2-3 days of cardio. Most prefer to separate cardio vs strength training as you are working different systems. If you want a good weight training program, google strong lift 5x5. It's great for beginners and you can do it from home if you have some weights.

    Next, I would ensure you are being very accurate with your logging. That can be critical to success.

    Now if you start struggling to see major gains in strength then you can add creatine but I found it gave me stomach issues which I didn't think was worth the little amounts of performance increases.
  • Ryne15
    Ryne15 Posts: 6
    Take creatine. Its not bad for your kidneys. Get regular creatine monohydrate, take one serving every day (5g). You will gain a few pounds of water weight at the start yes, but that doesn't mean it hurts weight loss. The extra muscle you gain will help you LOSE weight by raising your BMR. Once you reach your goal stop taking the creatine and the water weight will be gone in a couple weeks.

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