Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Creatine for Women: How to Take It, How Much You Need & What It Actually Does

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Think creatine is only for bodybuilders or worried it's going to make you bulky or gain weight? Let's talk about what creatine actually does.In this episode, I'm breaking down the research on creatine, including studies looking specifically at women, and showing you how I personally use it as part of my strength and muscle-building routine.We'll talk about creatine monohydrate, dosage, consistency, water retention, resistance training, protein, loading phases, and why maintaining muscle becomes increasingly important as we age.I'm also giving you a simple challenge you can start today: 30 days of consistent creatine paired with two strength-training sessions each week.In this episode: What creatine actually does  Why creatine isn't just for men  Does creatine make you gain weight?  Creatine and water retention  Why training matters  The type of creatine I use  How much creatine to take  Why I take creatine every day  Whether you can put creatine in coffee  Creatine and protein  Simple resistance exercises you can do at home  My 30-day creatine challenge Resources MentionedQualia Creatine+, use code MINDY at checkout for 15% offFREE Nervous System QuestionnaireReset AcademyAge Like a GirlResistance BandsFor more resources related to today’s episode, visit the podcast episode page: drmindypelz.com/ep372Connect with Dr. Mindy:Join Reset AcademyWatch the episodes on YouTubeFollow Dr. Mindy on InstagramSubscribe to Dr. Mindy’s newsletterDisclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your diet, fasting routine, or lifestyle.

How many of you felt your brain go offline the minute you hit your 40s? When my brain started to go offline in my early 40s, I was crazy scared. I went from being the woman who could hold everything together to not being able to get through a full workday. The positive thinking that had always been my superpower, it just disappeared. Worst case scenarios replaced it. Anxiety I didn't recognize. A version of myself, I didn't sign up for.

I thought something was deeply wrong with me. And then I went looking for answers. What I found didn't just help me. It changed the entire way I understand what it means to be a woman moving through this season of life. Your brain is not broken. It's remodeling. That's why I wrote, age like a girl, to really lay that out for all of you. It's part science.

It's part my own story. the messy, humbling, ultimately beautiful story of a woman who had to fall apart a little before she could figure out who she actually was. If you're in that right now, I want you to know you are not alone, and this is not the end. It might just be the beginning of the most powerful chapter of your life. So age like a girl, it's available now at Dr. Mindy Pells.com slash books. And please know, I am always cheering you on. Hey, Dr. Mindy here, and welcome to the Live Like a Girl podcast, where I bring you icons, disruptors, educators, scientists, and doctors that show you what can be possible when you love and celebrate the female body you are blessed to live in.

Let's dive in. Okay, let's talk about creatine because. a lot of you think it's just for men. Some of you actually think that it's making you gain weight. I've seen your comments. Some women are really scared because they think it's going to make them bloated. And I've got an incredible study to unpack with you that will change the way you use and look at creatine. And here's the study. It looked at over 3,600 people. It was out of the Journal of International Society of Sports Nutrition. It was a 2024 study. And what they found is the key to creatine is you've got to pair it with exercise. And I'm going to show you exactly what type of exercise.

And what they found is if you paired creatine, And I'm going to give you the dosage on this video too. If you paired creatine with exercise, it didn't matter what sex you were. It didn't matter what age you were. It didn't matter if you were fit or not fit. You lost body fat and gained lean muscle mass. There is magic to creatine, but you got to do it right. And on this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to do this.

So you can get the same. result that the people in this study did. Now, before I dive into the study, many of you are starting to hear that I have a new free giveaway called a Nervous System questionnaire, and it'll help you see what workouts, what food, what fasted state, what supplements match to your nervous system state so you can customize information like what I'm giving you here on this video. So you can either put NSQ in your comments or you can see the link at the top of this. video and it's a free giveaway so you can customize the information in this video to match your needs. Let's dive into the study. So here's the first thing that they found is it was 0.82 kilograms

of fat-free mass that they gained compared to the placebo. So they built muscle. Well, at the same time, they lost weight. So the body fat percentage went down by, 0.28%, but it wasn't just taking the creatine. And I think this is where we've all gotten it wrong. I know when I first learned about creatine, this is where I just thought, oh, you take this and you start building muscle. It doesn't work like this. You've got to take creatine on a regular basis at a specific dosage and combine it with muscle training. And I've taught you all here on this channel that the most effective muscle training out there where you can build muscle and you can lose weight is resistance training. So resistance training is like these resistant bands, where you

are having to make a contraction in both directions. Whereas a weight, often gravity, you can push the weight up, but gravity will just allow you to bring the weight down. With resistant bands, what happens is you're actually having to hold a contraction through a full range of motion, which gives you a better muscle result. And if you pair that with creatine, a very specific type of creatine, this is where we move away from I'm bloated. It's making me gain weight. And we move into I'm losing weight and I'm gaining muscle. And this is what we're wanting to get from creatine. Now, let's talk about the kind of creatine.

So if you hopefully know this, but if you don't, it's important to know that you want a creatine monohydrate. My preferred creatine, and I've tried a lot of them, and this one I've noticed the best result with, I'm definitely starting to gain muscle. I can feel it in my 56-year-old body. I'm doing exactly what I'm teaching you on all my videos I do myself. And I notice that in many of the creatines, some of the powder is a little bit clumpy or a little too coarse. So my personal favorite is Qualia. We'll leave links in there

and discount codes if you want to dive in and try this one. But most importantly, I want you to understand that we are looking for a creatine monohydrate. That is what you want to get the results that this study was able to get. Now, some of the challenges I've seen with working with a lot of women specifically is that we have a tendency to think that creatine is for bodybuilders. Now, in age like a girl, my last book that I wrote, I did a whole chapter on exercise through manopause. and in it I brought a lot of interesting research to you all on creatine. And one of the things that I don't think that a lot of women understand is that as you go through menopause, as estrogen goes down, your own natural creatine stores will follow.

So I'm personally one of those people that wants you to accomplish all your health goals with food, with fasting, with exercise. I don't think the goal of health is to be on like 20 different supplements. I just, after so many years of working with people, that is absolutely not the goal. But there is a handful of supplements that are really important for you to be on. Magnesium is one of them. I've done a big, a lot of research on this and talked about a lot of videos on this. I think everybody needs vitamin D, absolutely.

And I think especially for menopausal women, Perry, if you're in the transition or postmenopausal, you don't have as much estrogen, so you absolutely need to be supplementing in with creatine. And so you don't have to be a bodybuilder to get the benefit from creatine. It's not about bulking up. I want you to think of creatine as muscular, cellular, energy. That is what it's like every time you take a sip, and I'm going to talk about how you take it in dosages here, but every time you take a sip, I want you to think I am giving my muscles energy for the workout that I'm going to do. Second thing that I see with a lot of people is that

they think they only take it on their workout days. Put it in the comments if you are one of these people who have been bought into this myth. And I don't mean it like to call you out. I just think a lot of us have been using it wrong. The study proved that you need to be taking it consistently every single day, not just on your workout days. So for me, I put it in my coffee every morning. Now, there was a lot of discussion about, okay, what if the heat of my coffee actually

starts to break down the creatine. This went through social media recently. I was like, oh my God, do we now have to worry about the temperature of our coffee to know if we're getting creatine? I mean, does this make you guys crazy? Sometimes I'm like, God, can we just eat food and take some supplements and feel better? We have to think about the temperature of the drink the creatine is going into. And the temperature that actually breaks creatine down is pretty high. It's like 150 degrees. I do not think your coffee is 150 degrees. So I like to build lifestyle tools and offer you lifestyle tools that are simple. So I literally put a scoop in my coffee every single morning. So it's not the study said this result, this loss of body fat and gain of muscle.

It can't happen with just the creatine alone. You ask. actually need to do it every single day and you need to do it in combination with working out. You don't have to work out every day. Don't worry. I'm going to get into that. The bloating trap. So a lot of people are like put in the comments if you took what you took creatine and all the sudden you got bloated. What creatine is going to do is it's going to send water to your muscles. Why does your muscles need water? Because it needs hydration for performance. So if you are driving water to muscles, but you're not using those muscles, then yeah, you're going to start to feel like you're swelling up because creatine is doing what is supposed to be doing.

It's driving all that water to muscles, but the muscle isn't being used. So you're going to feel doughy. You're going to feel a little bloated. You're going to feel like you're gaining weight. and the goal of this study was to show that you actually have to combine it with some form of muscle strength. Honestly, I think the same is for protein, and we'll talk about protein in a moment. I have watched more people gain weight trying to do one gram of protein for one pound of body weight they want to be because they weren't using their muscles, and so all that protein turns to fat.

Same thing with creatine. You are getting those muscles ready so that they can perform for you. Now, let's talk about the loading doses. Early on, when we got all excited about creatine, we are like, oh, okay, you should do 10 grams for a week, and then you take it down to 5 grams for two weeks, and then you go off of it for a week. Another crazy making. Like, who's got time to figure out what week you're at? I have good news for you. In this, study that I quoted at the beginning of this video, they found that there is no significant difference in fat-free muscle mass when you do a loading dose. So what dose do you do? Three to five grams consistently every day of creatine monohydrate. And it will start to saturate your muscle stores and make it

ready for performance. Now, I just want to say because this one's interesting, there has been a lot of talk about creatine with jet lag at very high doses. That's a whole other video, and I think there's incredible science where you go up to like 20 grams when you hit those jet lag moments, your brain's a muscle, and it will help you get over that jet leg quickly. I have tried that, and it works. The other place that I've used a high dose at is, you know, especially for my menopausal women, if all of a sudden you're just have a lot of sleepless nights and you're feeling punchy, this is where a high dose could bring your brain back online. But for the sake of losing weight and building muscle, three to five grams every day consistently. Another thing I've

heard from people is, well, they haven't studied this on weight. women. Well, good news because there is a new 2026 meta-analysis that looked, it was a meta-analysis, so it looked at 34 different studies, which totaled to about 700 women. It was the first ever woman-only creatine meta-analysis, and here's what they found, that statistically they saw a positive effect on two things. Body composition, which is what we're talking about here in the 700 women, and performance. Now, let's unpack performance for a moment because some of you are very active individuals that are working out a lot. So yes, three to five grams every day is going to help you with your daily workouts. Some of you have hobbies like me. I love to surf.

And I notice that I go out surfing every day, two hours, every day. And I notice my paddle strength is much stronger when I'm taking creatine on a regular basis. I used to prescribe to the idea that I needed to do the loading dose and then taper down and then not do, then get off of it for a week. That was the way we used to talk about it. When I got off of it for a week, I noticed paddle strength, wasn't as good. Since I've been doing three to five grams, consistently paddle strength is definitely consistently getting better and better. So we all have different things that we're working on. So performance could be in the gym, performance could be in a hobby, performance could be in life.

Remember in the 90s when creatine was just marketed to men? You know, like the bodybuilding men? Well, that was a big mistake because it turns out that our bodies as women need creatine even more than men and especially as we age. So women start with lower creatine stores than men and declining estrogen drops us further over time, which means more muscle loss and more brain fogs two things that I don't know about you, but we cannot afford to happen if we want to age powerfully and independently. Qualia creatine plus isn't just creatine. It's actually an entire creatine complex with two forms of clinically tested creatine, plus my favorite supplement, magnesium, and a handful of electrolytes

to get the creatine to actually go into your cells, not just sit in your cells, not just sit in your gut. There is no bloating, no bulky muscle. It is just strong, lean muscle support. And an amazing difference in mental clarity because our brains need creatine as much as our muscles. Qualia creatine plus is creatine built for a woman's body. And it's an effortless, tasteful scoop of powder that you dissolve into your favorite beverage for a quick daily support. Personally, I put it in my coffee every single morning. And I think it's a no-brainer for aging well. So go to qualiaLife.com forward slash Mindy and use the code Mindy and you will get 15% off this amazing creatine complex. So that's Qualia creatine plus code Mindy at Qualia.

Life.com forward slash Mindy. Let me know what you think. Here are five things I want you to think about when taking creatine. So first, you got to give your body something to use the creatine for. So creatine without training does nothing. It produces no measurable change. So we want to make sure that you're training and what does that look like? I realize that many of you are like love the gym. You go regularly. You come to this video because you want to know how to improve there. I also realize that some of you just you're like dreading picking the weight up. So let's make this simple for you. I want you to pick two days a week that you are going to do strength training. And let me know if you're going to do this. Put this in the in the comments. I

read the comments. So thank you for those of you who keep putting stuff in. I feel like I have a relationship with you. So I really appreciate interacting with you because then I also know how to make videos that are customized to you. So two days a week, we are going to make sure that we are doing some type of strength training. The research is now showing resistance training is the best for weight loss. I have done videos on that. I will leave links in the notes here so you can access those. But it doesn't have to be, you don't have to have a gym membership, it doesn't have to be fancy, it can be 20 to 30 minutes in one of these strength training sessions, but what I want you to do is I want you to make sure you're covering the big muscle grips. So you, especially your legs.

I know a lot of you come to my channel because you want to lose weight. I want to make sure that you are strengthening your legs first. They are your biggest metabolic organ. Your calves, your quads, your hamstrings. So you can do squats. You can do lunges around your dining room table. You can get up from this video. You can do it for the rest of the video. Get up and squat. 25 squats. Just squatting starts to build those quad muscles. So you could do push-ups. I started my surf bestie and I started doing push-ups before every surf session. Anything that uses your body weight is going to be a form of resistance training. You want to focus on the largest muscles in your body.

That is going to give you the best metabolic bang for your buck. And you just have to do it twice a week. Step number two. I want you. You're going to take your creatine every day. You might do it in water, you might do it in a smoothie, you might do it in coffee like me. Personally, I don't taste it. It does not have a taste for me, but I had to put it into a ritual.

So if you don't want it in your coffee, I understand that a lot of people have rituals around coffee. They don't want to mess their coffee up. You put it in water and drink your glass of water before your coffee. but you want to make sure that you're consistently building these creatine stores. Because without the consistency, you won't get the benefit we're talking about. And consistency beats intensity when it comes to dosage for creatine. Step number three is I want to make sure you, and God, I just had a friend that called me about this. This is such a good example.

Don't get caught up in these creatine gimmicks, like these chews. I had a friend call me and said, hey, I want to know about creatine. What do you think of the chews? I don't know. You're going to put the powder that I like, and you're going to put it in a chew, and now you've got other ingredients to contend with. And those of you who are fasting is going to pull you out of a fasted state. So don't get caught up into the greek.

gimmicks. It's literally this simple. It's a powder. It's creatine monohydrate and it is three to five grams every single day. If you love the choose, fine, but now you got all those ingredients you're going to need to make sure that you know. So don't get fall into all of those sales tricks to try to get creatine into you. It's simple. Just get the powder, put it in the coffee, put it in your water, and you're going to be great. Step number four is feed the muscles you're building. It's fascinating to me how the conversation, especially for aging women, has really gone to, it's so important for us to build muscle. And for my postmenopausal women out there, I know some of you are just like, really like one more thing I got to do now. And if you,

feel that way, put it in the comments. You want to make sure that other than creatine, you are doing protein. And yes, the research is like 30 grams of protein at every meal. I've done videos on how the best research on visceral fat weight loss right now is intermittent fasting with protein pacing and resistant bands. I'll leave links to those videos here for you. But what I want you to know is that if you want to build muscle, which if you're a 60-year-old woman, 65-year-old woman, and you're like, here I go, I'm going to try to build muscle. When you start to see the evidence of muscle building, what ends up happening is your motivation goes through the roof. So let's make sure that we are prioritizing protein. I build every single meal around protein. I look at the protein source,

first and then the rest goes fiber usually goes next, fat goes next, and then the carbohydrate is like an afterthought. But I love carbohydrates. I just don't lead with carbohydrates. I lead with protein. If you are trying to gain muscle and lose fat, yes, you have to feed your muscle with more than just creatine. If you can add that protein in, you're going to get that extra boost and you're going to get the momentum that you're looking for. Step number five, build a weekly routine around this, because what's happening is that if you are struggling to get this done on a regular basis, get your creatine in, this is why I love the coffee, if you're struggling to figure out how to take it, I want you to do it in a morning routine. Every single morning, you're either going to do a

glass of creatine or you're going to do it in your cup of coffee. Another routine you could do is you can be focused on every time you do a post-workout smoothie that you put it in your smoothie. But build it into a daily habit. I mean, you could even bill it into brushing your teeth in the morning. You could go, oh, I brush my teeth and you put your jar of creatine right next to where you are brushing your teeth, put it in some water, and then take it after you brush your teeth. But build it into a weekly routine. So because remember that in this study, it showed that consistency was key. There were a couple key things.

And consistency in low doses was magic. So we don't want to miss a day. Second thing I want you to do is I want you to pick two days a week. you are going to do strength training. If you're trying to build muscle, lose weight, and you don't go to the gym, and maybe you're a post-menopausal woman, do the resistance bands. It's easy. It's enjoyable. There's a lot of ways to do them. If you need more help on how to do resistance bands, please join me in my Reset Academy. We work out together as a group every Saturday morning, and this is the kind of stuff I'm showing on a regular basis.

But why I wanted step five to be build this into a full routine is because where we start to take videos like this and we get excited about the information, but then it falls to the wayside, is that we don't have it into some kind of rhythm. So I want it to go into an effortless rhythm, like for me, right? now, it would feel really weird for me to not put creatine in my coffee because I've been doing it

for so long. So here is my challenge to you. I want you for the next four weeks, I want you to do a daily dose of three to five grams of creatine, and I want you to do two days of strength training. So let me know if you're going to do that. Be accountable to me. I read my comments. So put in there, I'm going to do the creatine challenge. Put in creatine challenge so that you can get 30 days from now, you can get that extra muscle boost. Now, I like to always tell you the difference between men and women. When it comes to creatine, the results that men get compared to women get are not statistically much different. So women, I read you the study. It's a new meta-analysis. This works for you, where it falls apart is when you start to not add the strength training in. You've got to use

the creatine that you are drinking to be able to get that muscle growth. So please make sure you follow the steps I gave you in this video. Three action steps you can take right now. Put on your calendar right now. When this video clicks off, go put on your calendar two days a week that you can sign up yourself up for working out and doing resistance training. Okay, step number two, how are you going to take this? Is it coffee? Is it water? Is it smoothie?

Put it in the notes, the comments right now. You and I, we're accountability buddies. So put it in the comments. I can remind you what you were trying to achieve. Okay. Action step number three is I want you to build every single meal around a protein source. Start with a protein source. Every and then then the fiber, then the fat, then the carbohydrate. Build a whole meal around a protein. Let me know if you're going to do

the creatine challenge. Report back. Give it 30 days. Then come back to this video. Tell me what your results are. If you need help, join me in my academy. Most important, listen to me. if you made it this long through the video, don't give up on yourself. Part of the challenge of being healthy and living in the body you love is we have over-complicated health. I wanna make it really simple for you.

And this information is life-changing when you chunk it down and you commit to it every single day. Don't give up on yourself. As always, I hope this helps.