Creatine or Mass Gainer: Can You Take Both?

Creatine and Mass Gainer are both popular supplements for people trying to gain weight. They’re 2 of the most effective, popular, and cost-effective options on the market. This makes them competitors, right?

Today we’re going to compare creatine vs mass gainer supplements, what’s best for you, and why they take totally different approaches to weight gain. The price and space in your weight gain supplement stack may be limited by budget, for example.

These two supplements have totally different effects and ways of supporting weight gain – so let’s look at what they do.

What is Creatine? How Do Creatine Supplements Work?

Creatine is a pseudo-vitamin that helps improve the energetics of muscle cells but is used in a wide range of other tissues. It forms one part of creatine phosphate, which is essential for adenosine triphosphate – or ATP, the most important high-energy compound in the body.

Creatine supplementation puts more of this essential compound in your body, meaning more can get to muscles. The total pool of high-energy compounds in your system goes up with supplementation.

Basically, creatine supplementation helps you fuel your muscles better.

This means better workouts, as well as possible recovery and growth benefits, both in weight gain quantity and quality (i.e. more muscle mass and less fat).

How Does Creatine Help You Gain Muscle And Weight?

Creatine helps you gain muscle mass by improving workouts and recovery, as well as things like cell volume and hydration. It also has powerful synergies with carbohydrates, preventing muscle damage to help boost recovery and thus promote better muscle glycogen levels.

The levels of ATP in your muscle determine everything from strength to endurance to post-exercise recovery. 

Keeping muscles packed with energy keeps them functioning at their best. It not only improves their immediate workout performance but also how they repair, resupply, and grow themselves after exercise.

Creatine in the diet helps improve the energy available for these processes. This is why creatine is in the diet of almost every elite athlete and bodybuilder. 

It also has some mild health benefits that can be helpful to your metabolic-hormonal system, and even protects against early cell death.

What Are Mass Gainer Supplements?

Mass gainers are calorie-rich carb and protein supplements that make it easier to gain weight. 

They’re calorie dense drinks, making them easier to consume without taking up space in your daily appetite – they’re less filling than full meals to help skinny guys gain weight and muscle mass.

Mass gainers are typically powders designed to be mixed into liquids like milk or water. Some brands are incredibly thick (like Mutant Monster mass) while others are more reasonable and manageable. 

The calorie content, taste, texture, and nutrient profiles vary from one product to the next.

How Do Mass Gainer Supplements Help You Gain Muscle Weight?

The important thing is that mass gainers are packed with calories, carbs, and protein.

They offer easy and convenient calories with a ratio of carbs and protein that is optimal for post-workout recovery and makes it easy to add 100s or 1000s of calories to a normal diet.

If you’re a skinny person looking to gain weight, you can use a normal healthy diet and add a mass gainer to get into a calorie surplus. This is often easier for students and those busy with work, helping reduce the stress, planning, and expense of weight gain.

Mass gainer can also be used as a more-intense alternative to protein shakes.

They make a great post-workout snack shake where they provide a more complete answer to the muscle-recovery question than protein shakes, with more calories and additional carbohydrates to drive up muscle protein building.

Can You Take Creatine With Mass Gainer?

Yes, you can take creatine with mass gainer – and it might be the best time! 

Creatine works well with both the protein and carbs in mass gainer to improve cell energetics. It also helps support total body energy levels and cell energetics, which are key to better weight gain.

Carbs, protein, and creatine are a 3-point synergy that helps you get at your weight gain from 3 important angles.

The competition between these 2 supplements is in the way they cost you money and compete for your attention. There’s no reason you can’t – or shouldn’t – use creatine and mass gainer simultaneously. Because they work on different systems, the competition between the two is made up.

The best benefits of each overlap and, in some cases, may even work together better than apart. Creatine is so widely and cheaply available that you can use both without spending much extra money – especially with a low cost budget creatine monohydrate powder.

 What matters is understanding what each of these supplements do to support your weight gain. The more you understand them, the better you can make use of their benefits. It’s fair to say that mass gainer is for recovery, while creatine is useful for both workout and post-workout roles.

Taking creatine and mass gainer together is completely fine and shouldn’t pose any side effects. 

While both of these items may be a little heavy in the gut (both alone and together), they may be better together. Creatine when taken without enough water or food can cause cramping, but mass gainer provides fluids and carbs to support healthier absorption.

Creatine And Mass Gainer Synergies: When Do They Work Together?

The benefits of creatine and carbs – in combination – are also potent. The uptake of glycogen into muscles is easier with creatine and its osmolytic effects. Creatine pulls water into muscle cells, which is also a crucial part of glycogen storage.

Creatine is also useful for improving the maintenance of muscle tissues after workouts. Higher energy levels and water content in cells reduces the risk of muscle damage. This is bad by itself, but also profoundly limits carb storage in muscles, which can limit repair and growth.

The combined intake of protein, carbs, and creatine is perfect for this kind of post-exercise recovery. The creatine reduces muscle damage and improves energetics, while the protein is great for reducing muscle damage – and signaling for growth.

Finally, the creatine-booster carbs are perfect for overcoming muscle damage induced low-carb status.

This happens after damaging exercise and limits the re-uptake of essential carbs into muscle.

Taking mass gainer and creatine together can really ease limited recovery and protect against muscle damage. This is key to kickstarting recovery and growth – especially if you’re working high-rep bodybuilding-style training or going very heavy.

Conclusion: Our Final Thoughts

Mass gainer and creatine are perfect partners – they support the same goals but with different mechanisms. This means you’re never having to choose one or the other, especially with the price of creatine from some sources.

The best choice is both – and the only competition is for your cash.

These two types of supplement work best together and offer a complimentary approach, ensuring your muscles have everything they need to stay safe, perform better, and build more muscle mass over time.

Creatine and mass gainer can be taken together – either on the same diet or even in the same shaker. If you’re looking to get the best of both worlds, check out our comprehensive review of the best mass gainers and best creatine supplements for weight gain.

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