Nutrition 101
Creatine Dose by Bodyweight: Running Your Own Number
Three to five grams is a population average. Here's how to work out where you sit inside it.
Most creatine advice gives a flat number — 5 g a day. It's a reasonable default and it ignores that a 55 kg person and a 100 kg person have very different creatine pools.
The weight-adjusted approach is more precise, and worth five minutes of arithmetic.
The figures
Two commonly cited weight-based recommendations from the literature:
- Maintenance: roughly 0.03 g per kilogram of bodyweight per day
- Loading: roughly 0.3 g per kilogram per day for 5–7 days, split into four doses
Run the maintenance figure:
| Bodyweight | 0.03 g/kg | Practical dose |
|---|---|---|
| 55 kg | 1.7 g | 3 g |
| 70 kg | 2.1 g | 3 g |
| 85 kg | 2.6 g | 3–4 g |
| 100 kg | 3.0 g | 4–5 g |
| 115 kg | 3.5 g | 5 g |
Notice something: the calculated figures come in below the standard 3–5 g advice for most people. That's not an error — the 0.03 g/kg figure is derived from replacing daily creatine turnover, and the conventional advice includes a margin.
Which is sensible. A little extra costs almost nothing and covers variation in turnover, dietary intake, training load and absorption. Practitioners generally round up rather than down.
Lean mass is the better variable
Bodyweight is a proxy. What actually holds creatine is muscle, so lean body mass predicts your pool size better than total weight.
Two people at 90 kg with substantially different body compositions have different creatine requirements, and the more muscular one needs more. If you have a reasonable body composition estimate, calculating from lean mass is more accurate.
For most people this refinement is unnecessary. The dose–response relationship isn't sharp enough that a gram either way changes outcomes, and creatine is safe across a wide range.
Where our gummies sit
Each gummy contains 1 g of creatine monohydrate. The label serving is three gummies — 3 g daily.
Reading that against the table: 3 g comfortably covers people up to around 85 kg with margin, and sits at the lower end for people above roughly 90–100 kg.
If you're larger, four or five gummies is closer to appropriate. Two things to weigh before doing that:
Sugar alcohols scale with the dose. Three gummies is 9 g; five gummies is 15 g. Individual tolerance varies, but maltitol commonly produces digestive symptoms somewhere above 20–30 g daily, with sensitive people reacting lower. See the maltitol post.
Cost scales too. A 200 g pouch is 22 servings at three gummies. At five gummies it's about 13 days.
A practical alternative for larger individuals: gummies for the daily habit, topped up with a small amount of monohydrate powder. Less tidy, considerably cheaper, and it plays to each format's strength. See gummies vs powder.
Does the dose need to be exact?
No, and this is worth emphasising because it's where people over-engineer.
Creatine works through saturation. Once muscle stores are full, they're full — additional creatine is converted to creatinine and excreted. The dose isn't producing a graded effect; it's replacing daily turnover to hold a ceiling.
Which means being slightly over is harmless and slightly under just means slower saturation. There's no precision requirement of the kind there would be for, say, a medication.
What genuinely matters is consistency. Three grams every day beats five grams four days a week. See why daily consistency matters.
Adjusting up: when it's worth it
- Over roughly 90 kg. Larger pool, higher absolute turnover.
- High training volume. More turnover.
- Four to six weeks in with no observable change. Before concluding non-response, rule out an inadequate dose. See non-responders.
- Vegetarian or vegan. No dietary creatine contribution, so supplementation carries the full load.
The short version
Under 85 kg: three gummies is fine. Over 90 kg: consider four or five, or supplement with powder.
General information about a natural health product, not medical advice.