Josie Porter is always reassessing her supplement stack.
The dietitian and author of “How Not To Take Supplements,” which promotes a food-first approach to health, takes them as needed.
That’s why she stopped taking creatine around three years, when she started going to the gym less around a year ago.
Creatine, once a secret weapon of athletes and bodybuilders, has gone mainstream in recent years as strength training has overtaken cardio as the workout du jour. The body naturally produces creatine, a building block of the molecule ATP that gives our cells energy. We can also get creatine from eating protein, like red meat and seafood. Creatine is one of the most well-studied supplements, and research suggests that, if taken correctly, it can help the body find the energy needed to do an extra rep or two in the gym, leading to bigger gains.
As a supplement, it typically comes in the form of a white powder. For it to work, research suggests you need to take 5mg a day for four weeks, and maintaining that daily dose to see the benefits.
“The idea is that you want to saturate your muscles if you’re taking it for gym-related benefits,” Porter told Business Insider.
Porter loves strength training, but is currently prioritizing flexibility in her workout schedule over optimization due to some mental health struggles. “I’m trying to remove pressure where I can,” she said.
“Often the benefits come from when people are really having big bursts of energy and hitting that one-rep max,” Porter said of creatine. “I’m not really doing so much of that lately, so I just figured there wasn’t really a need to take it.”
Emerging evidence suggests that creatine offers health benefits beyond the gym. Early-stage studies have found that taking the supplement at higher doses could boost brain health and cognition, but Porter doesn’t feel the evidence is strong enough yet to warrant her taking it daily if she’s not focusing on building muscle.
“Until I start training differently, I probably won’t bring it back in, but I do think it’s got some good evidence behind it,” she said.
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