The answer fits on one line: five grams of creatine monohydrate, once a day, every day. Not five grams per kilogram of anything, not a loading week first, not a break every eight weeks. If that is all you came for, you are done. The rest of this article is the reasoning, plus the questions people ask straight after — because the dose is simple and the internet has made it look complicated.
This is written for women over 40, but the number does not change with age or sex. What changes is the reason you are taking it: after 40 the case for creatine is strength, bone and a clearer head under load, not a bigger bench press. The dose that serves those goals is the same one the research has used for thirty years.
Why five grams?
Muscle stores creatine as phosphocreatine, and there is a ceiling to how much it will hold. Roughly five grams a day is what it takes to fill that store and keep it filled while your body clears creatine at its normal rate, about two grams a day. Going higher does not raise the ceiling; the surplus is filtered out by your kidneys, which is an expensive way to buy nothing.
Three grams a day also reaches saturation, just more slowly. Five is the practical number because it covers everyone from smaller to larger frames, it is one level scoop, and it is the dose most of the trials in women actually used. The International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand puts the maintenance range at three to five grams a day and calls monohydrate at that dose one of the most studied and best tolerated supplements available.
Do I need a loading phase?
No. Loading — around twenty grams a day split into four doses for five to seven days — saturates the muscle faster, and that is its only advantage. Hultman's group showed in 1996 that a steady three grams a day arrives at the same saturation in roughly four weeks. At five grams you get there in three to four. Unless you have a competition in a fortnight, the slow route lands in the identical place and skips the stomach upset and the water-weight jolt that make people quit in week one.
If you do load, do not read anything into the scale. The first week's gain is water drawn into muscle alongside the creatine, and it settles. On the steady five-gram route most women notice no change in water at all, which is one more reason to take it.
Does body weight change the dose?
Barely, and not enough to act on. Larger bodies hold slightly more creatine, so protocols scaled to body mass land somewhere between three and six grams for most women. Five grams sits comfortably inside that band, which is why every practical guide converges on it. One scoop. Done.
The exception is the other direction: if you are very small and five grams gives you a loose stomach, three grams a day is a legitimate dose and will still saturate. Split it with a meal rather than dropping it.
When should I take it?
Whenever you will not forget. Morning, evening, with food, without food, before training, after training — the research puts consistency far ahead of timing. A 2022 review titled, honestly, "Creatine O'Clock" went looking for a timing effect and found small, inconsistent differences that vanish next to the effect of simply taking it every day.
So attach it to something you already do without thinking. Coffee is the usual winner: creatine dissolves in hot liquid, it has no taste, and it does not care about caffeine. If you take Daily System, the creatine is the morning half and the magnesium is the evening half — the split is there so each one has an anchor.
Do I need to cycle off, and what about rest days?
No cycling. The habit is inherited from stimulant supplements, where receptors adapt. Creatine has nothing to adapt: stop taking it and your stores drain back to baseline over about a month, which is the opposite of what you were trying to achieve. Long-term trials running for years at three to five grams a day have not found a reason to take breaks.
Rest days count. The point of a daily dose is a full store, not a pre-workout hit, and the store does not know whether you trained. Skipping rest days is the single most common way people spend money on creatine and get less than they paid for.
Missed a day? Take the next one as normal. Do not double up; the store drops by a fraction of a gram overnight and one scoop covers it. Missed a week? Same answer — five grams a day refills it in a few days without any loading.
Which form should I buy?
Monohydrate. Micronised if you like it to mix more easily, but monohydrate. Hydrochloride, buffered, ethyl ester, liquid and "advanced" blends all charge more for forms with less evidence behind them, and several supply less actual creatine per gram of powder. Jäger and colleagues reviewed the novel forms in 2011 and found none that beat monohydrate on the only two things that matter: does it raise muscle creatine, and is it safe. Nothing since has changed that.
Foundation is exactly this: five grams of creatine monohydrate per scoop, unflavoured, nothing else in the tub. If you would rather have electrolytes in with it, Flow carries the same five-gram dose in a lemon scoop — take one or the other, not both, or you double the dose for no gain.
Who should check first
Creatine monohydrate has one of the longest safety records in sports nutrition, and the reviews in women specifically — across the menstrual cycle, pregnancy planning, perimenopause and post-menopause — have not turned up a signal at three to five grams a day. That is not a reason to skip a conversation. If you have kidney disease, are on medication that affects the kidneys, or are pregnant, ask your clinician before starting. A creatinine reading on a routine blood test may sit slightly higher while you take it; tell whoever reads the panel, because it is the supplement, not your kidneys.
Everything above is the same advice we give on the tub. If any of it stops being supportable, we will change this page and say what changed.
Sources
- Kreider RB, Kalman DS, Antonio J, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: safety and efficacy of creatine supplementation in exercise, sport, and medicine. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2017;14:18.
- Hultman E, Söderlund K, Timmons JA, Cederblad G, Greenhaff PL. Muscle creatine loading in men. J Appl Physiol. 1996;81(1):232–237.
- Antonio J, Candow DG, Forbes SC, et al. Common questions and misconceptions about creatine supplementation: what does the scientific evidence really show? J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2021;18:13.
- Smith-Ryan AE, Cabre HE, Eckerson JM, Candow DG. Creatine supplementation in women's health: a lifespan perspective. Nutrients. 2021;13(3):877.
- Candow DG, Forbes SC, Roberts MD, et al. Creatine O'Clock: does timing of ingestion really influence muscle mass and performance? Front Sports Act Living. 2022;4:893714.
- Jäger R, Purpura M, Shao A, Inoue T, Kreider RB. Analysis of the efficacy, safety, and regulatory status of novel forms of creatine. Amino Acids. 2011;40(5):1369–1383.
