My creatine experience

Started lifting in September of '18. Would take about ten 30-gram servings of whey protein a week. I've been progressing consistently in all my lifts for 13 months. Either more reps or more weight for every workout for 13 months. Never failed to increase. I ran out of whey about 6 weeks ago, but just substituted a can of tuna or sardines in oil. My skin is starting get dry this time of year, so I thought the extra oil would help. In the last 4 weeks I failed horizontal push, failed horizontal pull, failed vertical push. This was the first time I failed since September. Yesterday I bought another tub of whey, and I read the ingredients. 1.5 grams of creatine per 30-gram serving. I'd been taking about 15 grams a creatine a week and didn't know it. I stopped taking it and failed 3 lifts. Now I'm back on.

Anyone have a similar experience?

I take 10g of creatine a day and notice very little other than about 2-3 pounds of weight gain.

5g/day is pretty standard and you were dosing less than half that, which leads me to believe creatine's not tje culprit.

FWIW creatine has been extensively studied, is moderate-to-highly effective, and cheap. Absent a random health issue, there's no reason not to take it ad infinitum.

[QUOTE=paulinkansas;1591655801]Started lifting in September of '18. Would take about ten 30-gram servings of whey protein a week. I've been progressing consistently in all my lifts for 13 months. Either more reps or more weight for every workout for 13 months. Never failed to increase. I ran out of whey about 6 weeks ago, but just substituted a can of tuna or sardines in oil. My skin is starting get dry this time of year, so I thought the extra oil would help. In the last 4 weeks I failed horizontal push, failed horizontal pull, failed vertical push. This was the first time I failed since September. Yesterday I bought another tub of whey, and I read the ingredients. 1.5 grams of creatine per 30-gram serving. I'd been taking about 15 grams a creatine a week and didn't know it. I stopped taking it and failed 3 lifts. Now I'm back on.

Anyone have a similar experience?[/QUOTE]

You need to give a lot more information to attempt to form a hypothesis. Bodyweight per week over this time-frame, grams of protein per day, program you were running, weights you were using on the major lifts along the way and when failing

The amount you were taking will have no impact whatsoever. 1.5g is not enough to raise your base creatine levels.

So, why has the manufacturer included the creatine when it's not enough, and why have they not printed this on the tub? I mean, you're either on creatine (in which case an extra 1.5g does not increase the effect), or you're not (in which case 1.5g is insufficient to raise base levels).

Creatine increases nitrogen readings in the finished product, and the nitrogen content is used to determine protein content on the nutritional information. This is known in the industry as "protein spiking", and allows them to list the protein content per serving as higher than it actually is.

Ditch the product and find a new one which just has whey in the ingredient list (unless it's flavoured, so will have sweetener/flavour added).

[QUOTE=StinkingDylan;1591950081]Creatine increases nitrogen readings in the finished product, and the nitrogen content is used to determine protein content on the nutritional information. This is known in the industry as "protein spiking", and allows them to list the protein content per serving as higher than it actually is.

Ditch the product and find a new one which just has whey in the ingredient list [/QUOTE]

That makes perfect sense. Thanks. I should retitle this post "This is why you shouldn't buy the cheap whey protein from Wal Mart".