For nearly two decades now, serious
weight trainers have turned to creatine for its well-documented benefits in the
gym — more weight, more reps, more muscle. It’s the stuff we love more than
anything else! But what if you have built enough mass (as if that could ever
happen) and are ready to trim down and show off your new muscles? Can creatine capsules help you with both muscle growth
AND fat loss?
The answer is a resounding, “Yes!”,
though the mechanisms involved may be a bit different than what you’d expect
from a typical fat-loss supplement.
Bigger
Muscles Burn More Calories
Muscle is active tissue that
requires energy even when you’re just sitting in front of your computer.
Estimates of just HOW MANY calories your muscles burn range from 5 to 50 per day per pound of muscle.
Even at the low end of that scale,
adding 10 pounds of muscle would help you burn about a pounds’ worth of fat
over the course of a couple of months, assuming that your diet didn’t change.
Since creatine helps you build more
muscle, it indirectly elevates your basal metabolic rate by helping you build
bigger biceps (and every other muscle), which will eat up more calories even
when they’re resting.
There is also at least some anectdotal evidence that well-hydrated muscle cells use
more energy than dehydrated cells, likely because hydration turns up the rate
of protein synthesis.
Building new proteins is metabolically
expensive, and creatine helps to create an anabolic environment by pulling
water into your muscles.
Heavy
Weights Require a Lot of Energy
Imagine for a moment that you can go
into the gym this afternoon and curl a 100-pound barbell for 10 reps.
Now suppose that you embark on a
regimen of creatine supplementation and, after six months, you can curl 150
pounds for 10 reps. Or maybe you can curl that original 100-pound weight for 20
reps.
Do you think the second workout will
require more energy, SIGNIFICANTLY more energy, to complete than the first
workout?
Of course!
The fact is, the stronger you get
and the longer you can extend your sets in the gym, the more calories you will
burn DURING your workout.
In the example above, you have
increased your strength in the barbell curl by 50-100%, and your energy
expenditure to complete your 10-rep set will increase, too. Multiply that by
10-20 sets per workout and 3-4 workouts per week and you’re looking at a
serious calorie burn.
If you maintain your caloric intake
near its starting level, the strength gains that you see from creatine
supplementation should lead to some decent fat loss over the course of several
weeks or months.
Constant
Burn
While creatine will not amp you up
like caffeine or ephedrine, two of the go-to fat-loss supplements for millions
of people trying to lean out, the powerhouse amino acid pumps up your muscle
size, strength, and exercise intensity. That three-pronged attack will have you
burning more calories than ever before, and caloric burn sets the stage for fat
loss.
If you’re looking for super-fast fat
loss, creatine may not be your best option, but its indirect effect on energy
expenditure is hard to beat when you consider that it’s a mere side effect when
compared to the potential mass and strength gains that have made creatine a
training-table staple.
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Health