Creatine Calculator

What is creatine?

Creatine is a natural compound that helps your muscles make quick energy for short, hard efforts like lifting, sprinting or climbing stairs. Your liver and kidneys make about 1 g a day, and you get more from meat and fish: beef has about 2 g per pound and salmon about 2 g per pound (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). On a normal diet with 1–2 g a day, your muscle stores are about 60–80% full, according to the ISSN position stand (ISSN position stand, 2017). A supplement tops them up.

In the classic study, 20 g a day for 6 days raised muscle creatine by about 20%, and 3 g a day reached the same rise in 28 days (Hultman et al., 1996). Fuller stores help you do a little more work in each hard set, which over weeks of training can add up to more strength and muscle. The NIH notes creatine is of little value for pure endurance sports like distance running (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements).

How this creatine calculator works

Enter your weight in pounds or kilograms, pick a goal and who the dose is for. The calculator shows:

• Daily dose: 3–5 g. The standard maintenance dose in the ISSN position stand (ISSN position stand, 2017). The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements calls it the typical adult protocol “regardless of sex or body size” (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements).
• Weight-based dose: 0.03–0.1 g per kg. The NIH lists this range for taking creatine without a loading phase for 3–4 weeks (NIH Office of Dietary Supplements). The top of the range, 0.1 g/kg, is the dose used in many strength-training studies in older adults (ISSN position stand, 2017).
• Loading phase: 0.3 g per kg a day for 5–7 days, split into 4 doses, then 3–5 g a day (ISSN position stand, 2017, NIH Office of Dietary Supplements).
• Large athletes: 5–10 g a day. The ISSN notes that larger athletes in intense training may need this much to keep their stores full (ISSN position stand, 2017).

Example, 180 lbs: 180 ÷ 2.2046 = 81.6 kg → daily dose 3–5 g (weight-based 2.4–8.2 g) → loading 0.3 × 81.6 = 24.5 g a day, as 4 doses of 6.1 g, for 5–7 days.

The scoop and teaspoon numbers are rounded to the nearest quarter. Many labels list 5 g as one rounded teaspoon, but powders differ, so the scoop in your own tub or a small kitchen scale is more accurate.

Which creatine should you buy?

Plain creatine monohydrate. It is the most researched form, and reviews have found little to no evidence that newer forms such as creatine ethyl ester, buffered creatine or creatine salts work better or are safer (Jäger et al., 2011, Antonio et al., 2021). “Micronized” monohydrate is the same thing ground finer so it mixes more easily. Creatine powder keeps for years, but creatine breaks down in liquid over time, so mix it and drink it rather than storing it pre-mixed (Antonio et al., 2021). More in how much creatine per day.

Women and older adults

Women can follow the same dosing as men (Smith-Ryan et al., 2021), and creatine is getting attention for menopause and healthy aging. In older adults, creatine taken during strength training added on average 1.37 kg (about 3 lb) more lean mass and more strength than training alone in a meta-analysis of 22 trials (Chilibeck et al., 2017). Read creatine for women and creatine for older adults.

Safety first

Creatine is one of the best-studied supplements. The ISSN position stand reports that up to 30 g a day for 5 years was safe and well tolerated in healthy people (ISSN position stand, 2017). The most common effect is a little water weight in the first days, especially with loading (Antonio et al., 2021). Still, talk to your doctor first if you have kidney disease, take prescription medicines or are pregnant or breastfeeding. See creatine side effects and safety and creatine water intake.