Six Star Creatine as a Weightlifting Supplement

For those of you who don't know Creatine is a chemical found in red meat that boosts muscle growth and regulates energy distribution to muscle tissue (and also other body parts). Creatine intake is good for your muscles, heart, brain and more - but it is primarily used by people who are into weightlifting and bodybuilding.

I recently purchased a new packaged of Creatine to aid me during my Winter weightlifting regimen. This is for my personal use, not for clients.

Normally I use Sportzone creatine monohydrate powder, but when I saw the Six Star package [shown right] last Friday at the Shoppers Drug Mart in Little Italy I decided I would give it a try.

The Six Star creatine 'fruit punch' powder comes with added colour, sugar, fruit punch flavour, etc to make it taste better. It tastes like fruit punch kool-aid, remarkably so.

The Sportzone creatine monohydrate powder is quite normal in comparison. It is just a white powder that you mix with water or tea and drink. It has no added sugar or flavouring.

The thing that bothers me about the Six Star creatine is that it is 200 calories per scoop. That shows you just how much sugar they added to the mixture. To put that in perspective a 710 mL bottle of Coca-Cola has 320 calories (don't get confused by the Coke label saying it has 160 calories for 355 mL, they have cut the measurement in half in an effort to trick people into thinking it is healthier than it really is).

200 calories is still a lot however. It is 10% of your daily needs, hence why I have decided to use half-scoops so it is only 100 calories (5% of my daily needs). The slight sugar rush will just give me more energy while I am exercising.

I would also argue that I probably don't need a full dosage of Creatine. Each full scoop contains 5010 mg of creatine and while 5 g (5000 mg) is a normal full dosage for Sportzone, I don't use the full dosage on that stuff either.

It is my opinion that these supplements are just that: Supplements. Taking a full dosage isn't a necessity when supplementing your regular diet. If you are already eating your fair amount of red meat you may not need to supplement your Creatine intake, or you may only need a small amount to supplement your intake.

Thus for myself I have chosen to use half dosages of Creatine for my personal use, supplementing my intake as I see fit. Plus since the Six Star creatine has all that added sugar, it makes a bit of sense that maybe I should not be drinking the stuff like a hog at the trough.

I will continue to use the Six Star Creatine, but it is my opinion that after I finish the above package that I will probably go back to using the Sportzone creatine and mixing it with regular water or tea. I find green tea goes quite well with it.