Before & After Creatine: How Much Extra Muscle Will You Gain?
Creatine helps you build muscle, sure, but how much? Creatine has thousands of studies proving its effectiveness, and every expert recommends it, but most people don’t know how whether it will help them build 5% or 50% more muscle.
One way to get an idea of how well it works is to look at before-and-after photos of guys combining weight training, a good bulking diet, and creatine supplementation. But that won’t tell you exactly how effective creatine is. That’s why we need to look at the research.
There are two big meta-analyses looking at how creatine affects muscle growth. The first tells us how much extra lean mass we can expect to gain. The second tells us how much extra muscle mass we can expect.
We don’t sell supplements. There are no affiliate links in this article.
How Creatine Works
When you lift weights, your muscles burn a fuel called adenosine triphosphate (ATP). When you run out of that fuel, you fail the rep, and your set is over. If you rest for a few minutes, your aerobic system can use the air you breathe to replenish that fuel, giving you the energy to do another set.
Supplementing with creatine allows you to produce more ATP, giving your muscles more fuel, thus allowing you to pump out an extra rep or two. That extra work stimulates extra muscle growth (meta-analysis).
Creatine also causes your body to retain more fluid. At first, this is easy to understand. It dissolves into water, and your muscle fibres soak up that solution, making them bigger and stronger, as well as improving their ability to grow even bigger (study).
That gives us the two benefits of creatine:
- Being able to do more reps allows us to stimulate more muscle growth per set.
- Muscle fibres with more fluid in them seem to grow faster.
What’s confusing about creatine is that it seems to increase overall water retention and glycogen storage, especially at first. This can make people gain a surprising amount of lean mass, often causing them to overestimate the benefits of creatine. We have a story about this.
Before & After Creatine
Ten years ago, back when Jared and I were roommates, we decided to bulk up together. Jared wanted to take creatine, but he didn’t want the water retention to confound his weekly weigh-ins, so he spent a week loading up on it before starting his bulk. During that first week of supplementing with 20 grams per day, he gained 8 pounds.
After that, we started bulking. Jared gained 33 pounds during his first 3 months. You can see his progress photos above, showing him going from 130 pounds to 163 pounds at 6 feet tall. As far as we can tell, at least 8 of those pounds were from creatine alone. After that, it likely improved his ability to build muscle. More on that in a moment.
On the other end of the spectrum, I seem to be a creatine non-responder. I’ve never noticed any change in body weight, muscularity, or workout performance from taking it. Here are my before and after photos, gaining 25 pounds during those same 3 months:
In our experience, most people fall somewhere in the middle of these two extremes. They gain a few extra pounds during their first month of taking creatine. Mind you, it’s incredibly difficult to tell. Even though Jared and I were living the same lifestyle, eating the same foods, and following the same workout program, individual variation obscures the effects of any one intervention.
You can’t look at the differences between two people’s results and assume those differences are because of any one thing. That’s what randomly controlled trials are for. And fortunately for us, there are hundreds of those trials organized neatly into two enormous meta-analyses.
How Much Weight Will You Gain?
20 years ago, Branch and colleagues published a meta-analysis showing that supplementing with creatine caused people to gain 3 times more lean mass while simultaneously losing fat (study). This was an incredibly influential study, and the impressive results raised creatine on the pedestal it still rests on today.
Gaining extra lean mass tends to make people look bigger and stronger. Not all lean mass is muscle, though. Remember, creatine also draws a few pounds of extra fluid into your body. Once your muscles are saturated with creatine, you’ll stop soaking up extra fluid, and the creatine will stop causing weight gain.
However, now that your muscle fibres are bigger and better-fueled, you’ll be able to build muscle faster. If you’re following a good bulking program, this is when the real benefit begins.
How Much Extra Muscle Will You Build?
A new meta-analysis by Burke and colleagues found that creatine increases muscle growth by around 33% (study). So, if you gain 10 pounds of muscle in the next 6 months from lifting weights and eating a good bulking diet, creatine might bump that up to 13 pounds.*
As we covered in the last section, creatine causes more than just muscle growth. You’ll also retain more fluid. Plus, bulking will make your bones denser and your tendons thicker. You’ll build new connective tissue, fill up your digestive system with more food, and probably gain a little bit of fat. By the time you gain 13 pounds of bonafide muscle, you might have gained closer to 25 pounds overall.
For example, here’s one of our members gaining 22.5 pounds in 5 months while lifting weights, eating an abundant bulking diet, living a good lifestyle, and supplementing with creatine:
As with the previous research on lean mass gains, this new meta-analysis suggests that the muscle-building benefits of creatine fade over time. Perhaps you’ll gain 33% more muscle during your first few months of supplementing with creatine, 25% more muscle during your first year, and 15% more muscle during your first decade. Don’t trust those numbers, though. I’m just recklessly speculating.
*Greg Nuckols from Stronger by Science helped me translate the results of this meta-analysis into a concrete number. As he explained it to me, the placebo groups increased their muscle mass by 0.33 standard deviations, and the creatine groups gained 0.11 standard deviations more than that, gaining 33% more muscle on average. If you want to take a deeper dive into the statistics, he has a great article on effect sizes.
Conclusion
Creatine is the most powerful muscle-building supplement on the market, tripling the amount of lean mass you gain when you first start taking it. However, most of that lean mass is fluid being drawn into your body. After you’ve gained a couple of pounds, your muscles will be saturated with creatine, and you’ll stop soaking up extra lean mass.
The real benefit of creatine is that once you’re in the habit of taking it, you’ll be able to stimulate more muscle growth and build muscle faster. It increases muscle growth by 33%, on average. So, if you would have gained 10 pounds of muscle without creatine, you might gain around 13 pounds of muscle with creatine.
For more on how to use creatine, check out our creatine guide. For more on muscle-building supplements, check out our article on supplements.
Alright, that’s it for now. If you want more muscle-building information, we have a free bulking newsletter for naturally thin guys. If you want us to walk you through the process of building muscle, check out our bulking program. It includes a 5-month full-body workout routine, diet guide, recipe book, and one-on-one support in our online community. Or, if you want a customizable intermediate bulking program, check out our Outlift Program.
Shane Duquette is the founder of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell, each with millions of readers. He's a Certified Conditioning Coach (CCC), has gained 70 pounds, and has over a decade of experience helping more than 15,000 people build muscle. He also has a degree in fine arts, but those are inversely correlated with muscle growth.
Marco Walker-Ng is the founder and strength coach of Outlift, Bony to Beastly, and Bony to Bombshell. He's a certified trainer (PTS) and nutrition coach (PN) with a Bachelor's degree in Health Sciences (BHSc) from the University of Ottawa. He has over 15 years of experience helping people gain muscle and strength, with clients including college, professional, and Olympic athletes.
Muscle-Building Mini-Course via EMAIL
Sign up for our 5-part muscle-building mini-course that covers everything you need to know about:
- Hardgainer genetics and how to make the most of them.
- How to take a minimalist approach to building muscle while still getting great results.
- What you need to know about aesthetics, health and strength while muscling up.
Thank you for this helpful article. For how long do you think it’s best to take creatine? Perhaps only for a few months while bulking? I’m wondering about our body’s response to taking this supplement over a long time – could it lose the ability to produce it naturally?
Hey Fabrizio, that’s a good question. That was a common concern a decade ago, when I was first looking into creatine. People would cycle it. They’d take it for a few months, build some muscle, and then stop taking it for a few months, letting their creatine levels fall back down. The idea was it could help us continue producing it naturally.
It turns out we don’t need to do that. Creatine is a normal nutrient found in meat. It’s normal to eat it. There’s no known downside to supplementing with it indefinitely.
On the other hand, the gains you make while using creatine are yours to keep. You might lose some fluid weight when you stop taking it, but you won’t lose the extra muscle you built. There’s no harm in bulking up on creatine then stopping when you ease back into maintenance. Totally up to you 🙂
Hey, I’ve did some blood work when I was taking 3g per day of creatine monohydrate. My “creatinine” level was something like 10.5/10, kinda maxed.
I don’t know if it actually tied with my creatine consumption (probably), but the question is – could I get more benefit from consuming 5g or it’s best to stick to those 3g per day to not cause troubles?
Hm. Some studies show that supplementing with creatine can raise creatinine levels. However, I’ve never heard that having higher creatinine levels indicates your muscles are fully saturated with creatine. I’m not sure about that.
3 grams per day is a normal dose of creatine. Some studies show it’s enough to get all the benefits. As a general rule of thumb, the bigger and more muscular you are, the more creatine you might be able to benefit from. Mind you, different people produce and consume different amounts, meaning different people benefit from supplementing with different amounts. 3 grams might be enough, but most guys take the extra 2 grams just to be sure.
I don’t think there are any known problems from supplementing with 5 grams of creatine, but you can ask your healthcare provider to make sure.
Unfortunately for me, I have the baldness gene. I’m afraid creatine could accelerate this.
I prefer gain 10 pounds of muscle with hair to gain 13 pounds bald 🙂
I hear you. I think Jared recently backed away from creatine for the same reason. Mind you, there’s very little evidence that creatine accelerates balding. There was one study that showed higher DHT levels in the group supplementing with creatine. It wasn’t a study on hair loss, but higher DHT levels are masculinising, and thus can affect male pattern baldness. If I recall correctly, their DHT levels were still within the normal range, so you wouldn’t expect that to accelerate hair loss. Plus, as far I know, those findings were never replicated in any other creatine studies. So I think the link between creatine, DHT, and hair loss is somewhat dubious.
On the other hand, you definitely don’t need creatine to build muscle, and I could imagine supplementing with it being stressful when you’re worried about hair loss. Might be more relaxing to avoid the need to even think about it. If I were in your shoes, I can imagine making the same decision.
Yeah, I’ve never found significant evidence associating creatine with baldness in the literature either.
Just my personal story: I started creatine in 2017 and never stopped til this day in 2023.
Lost some hairline on the sides for the first time in 2020 but the hairloss stopped there.
At least in my case it doesn’t seem creatine was related. Otherwise I’d expect some hairloss much earlier than 2020 and continuing til today.
Most likely my subtle hairloss was simply due to becoming 30 years old.
Ah, interesting! That’s an encouraging anecdote. Thank you.
I’ve heard of hairlines “maturing,” where the hairline cuts back at the sides a bit. I don’t know much about hair, though.
I’ve personally started to lose them when I was 15, haha. Gone bald in my early 20’s, no creatine were taken btw.
If it helps, a full head of long hair only weighs a couple of ounces. You didn’t lose that much lean mass.