I Kept an Energy Log for 45 Days Before and After Starting Creatine — Here's What I Found

The Short Answer: Yes, Creatine Changed My Energy — and I Have 45 Days of Data to Prove It

Yes, creatine made a measurable, documented difference in my daily energy levels — and I kept 45 days of handwritten notes to confirm it. After 30 years of tracking patient vitals for a living, I decided to turn that same methodical eye on myself. What I found surprised me, and I think it will surprise you too.

I’m Cecilia, a unit patient care specialist based in Little Rock, Arkansas. I founded ATO Health because I was tired of watching adults over 40 either dismiss supplements entirely or buy into marketing hype without any real framework for evaluating results. This post is my framework — applied to myself.

Why I Started Keeping an Energy Log (Instead of Just “Seeing How I Felt”)

Here’s what I’ve learned in three decades of clinical work: self-reported feelings without structure are nearly useless data. Patients would tell me they felt “fine” two hours after their blood pressure had spiked. Or they’d say they were “exhausted” on a day when their labs looked perfect. Human perception is noisy. That’s why we chart.

When women in my circle started raving about creatine — particularly on forums like Reddit’s r/Menopause, where posts like “Creatine changed my life” get hundreds of responses — I was skeptical. Not of creatine itself; the research on it is genuinely solid. I was skeptical of the mechanism people were describing. Were they actually feeling more energized? Or were they just doing more things and attributing all of it to the supplement?

So I did what any healthcare professional would do: I designed a simple tracking system, established a baseline, and then introduced the variable.

How I Set Up My 45-Day Energy Log

I kept my log straightforward. Every evening at roughly the same time (8 PM), I rated my energy across three categories on a 1–10 scale:

• Morning energy — how I felt within the first two hours of waking up
• Afternoon stamina — how I held up between 1–4 PM, which is when I’ve always been most vulnerable to hitting a wall
• Mental sharpness — my ability to focus, follow through on tasks, and hold a thought

I also noted any significant disruptions: bad sleep, extra stress, unusual activity, or caffeine intake outside my normal two-morning-cups routine.

The first 22 days were baseline — no creatine, no changes to my diet or exercise habits. Days 23 through 45 were on creatine: 5 grams of micronized creatine monohydrate mixed into water each morning, which is exactly what we offer at ATO Health.

What My Energy Looked Like Before Creatine (The Baseline Period)

My pre-creatine averages were:

• Morning energy: 5.6/10
• Afternoon stamina: 4.9/10
• Mental sharpness: 5.8/10

I’ll be honest — seeing those numbers written down was humbling. I had normalized feeling mediocre by 2 PM. The afternoon wall was just “part of getting older.” I’d reach for a third cup of coffee most days, which I knew wasn’t the answer but felt like my only option.

I also noticed a pattern I hadn’t consciously registered before: my worst days clustered around poor sleep and high-demand mornings. That’s not surprising — but it helped me understand that I wasn’t dealing with random energy variance. There was a baseline level of fatigue that sat below everything, independent of sleep quality.

Many women in the r/Menopause community have described something similar — what one commenter called “borderline chronic fatigue” that doesn’t quite reach clinical diagnosis but drags on daily function. That description felt uncomfortably accurate for where I was.

When the Shift Started to Happen (Not When I Expected)

The most common question I’ve heard since I started talking about this: “How fast did it work?” People expect either an instant burst of energy or nothing at all. That’s not how creatine works — and it’s not what I saw.

Days 23 through 27 (my first five days on creatine): no meaningful change. My scores stayed in their usual ranges, maybe slightly elevated, but within normal day-to-day variance. I noted on Day 24: “Feel the same. Expected this.”

Day 28 onward is where things shifted. My afternoon stamina scores began climbing first — from an average of 4.9 to 6.1 in that second week. My notes from around Day 30 read: “Made it through the afternoon without reaching for coffee. Stayed focused through a task I’d been avoiding all week.”

By the end of week three on creatine (around Day 37–38), all three scores had risen noticeably, and the gains held. This timeline tracks with what research shows: creatine takes 2–4 weeks to meaningfully saturate muscle phosphocreatine stores in adults, especially in postmenopausal women whose baseline creatine synthesis is already lower due to hormonal changes.

“It’s going to be a month of taking creatine, 5mg daily. I started for brain fog and fatigue. I do notice a slight improvement on my tendency to feel mentally sluggish.” — r/Menopause user, noting the same gradual timeline I experienced.

What My Energy Log Showed After 45 Days

My post-creatine averages (Days 23–45):

• Morning energy: 6.9/10 (up from 5.6)
• Afternoon stamina: 6.7/10 (up from 4.9)
• Mental sharpness: 7.1/10 (up from 5.8)

The biggest jump was afternoon stamina — a full 1.8 points. For anyone who’s spent years watching the clock hit 2 PM with a sense of dread, that shift is not trivial. It’s the difference between pushing through tasks and actually enjoying the second half of the day.

Mental sharpness showed the most consistent gains. My best pre-creatine mental sharpness score was an 8. After starting creatine, I had multiple 8s and 9s — and more importantly, my floor rose. The days when I “just couldn’t think straight” essentially stopped.

A 2025 review published in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that creatine supplementation offers significant benefits for postmenopausal women, particularly in maintaining muscle mass, supporting bone health, and improving cognitive function — areas where declining estrogen accelerates loss. (Smith-Ryan et al., 2025)

Three Patterns I Didn’t Expect to See

1. The bad days weren’t as bad. On nights when I slept poorly (under 6 hours), my pre-creatine morning energy scores would crater to 3 or 4. Post-creatine, the same poor sleep resulted in scores of 5 or 6. Creatine appeared to buffer the energy cost of a rough night. This made sense to me clinically — one of creatine’s established mechanisms is supporting rapid ATP regeneration, which is essentially your body’s emergency energy currency. When sleep-driven recovery is incomplete, having more available phosphocreatine in reserve may soften the blow.

A 2024 study published in Nature Scientific Reports found that a single high dose of creatine improved cognitive performance and blunted the effects of sleep deprivation-induced deterioration. That’s not just a gym result — that’s a real-life result for anyone running on less sleep than they need.

2. My mental energy tracked ahead of my physical energy. I expected the physical improvements to come first — more stamina during walks or yoga. Instead, my mental sharpness scores improved earlier and more dramatically. This surprised me until I thought about it from a clinical lens: the brain is an extraordinarily energy-hungry organ. About 20% of your body’s energy goes to the brain despite it being only 2% of body weight. If creatine is increasing cellular energy availability, the brain may feel it before your muscles do — especially in older adults whose neurological energy efficiency has already declined.

3. The results were consistent, not dramatic. I want to be honest here, because I see too much overselling. This wasn’t a transformation. It wasn’t like someone flipped a switch. It was a reliable, steady improvement across most days — the kind of shift that makes your life feel more manageable rather than more exciting. That consistency is actually what impressed me most. I’ve seen supplements deliver a burst of something for two weeks and then fade. This didn’t fade across 23 days of tracking.

According to a 2021 review in the International Society of Sports Nutrition, postmenopausal women have significantly lower endogenous creatine synthesis compared to younger adults, which may explain why supplementation in this group tends to produce more noticeable functional improvements.

What a 2025 Study Found That Explains My Results

The research that best explained my log data came from a comprehensive 2025 review by Smith-Ryan and colleagues in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, titled “Creatine in Women’s Health: Bridging the Gap from Menstruation Through Pregnancy to Menopause.” The paper reviewed two decades of research specifically on women and creatine — and found that postmenopausal women, in particular, tend to have lower baseline creatine levels, less efficient synthesis, and a higher potential response to supplementation.

That finding reframes the energy conversation. Most creatine content is written for young male athletes. When a 29-year-old bodybuilder takes creatine, his baseline levels are already decent. When a woman in her 50s or 60s takes creatine, she’s often starting from a significantly lower point — which means she has more room to gain and may feel it more clearly. My log data is consistent with that finding.

If you’re wondering whether creatine is safe for older adults, the evidence is reassuring — I’ve written more about that in my post on creatine safety for older adults.

Should You Try Tracking Your Own Energy?

Yes — and I think the tracking is almost as important as the creatine itself. Here’s why: without a baseline, you’ll never know what changed. Human memory is unreliable for gradual shifts. We tend to remember extreme days (the best and worst) and forget the average. A simple nightly log — even just three numbers and one sentence — gives you actual data to work with.

If you want to replicate my approach:

• Track for 2–3 weeks before starting creatine to establish your real baseline
• Rate morning energy, afternoon stamina, and mental sharpness on a 1–10 scale every evening
• Note any confounders (sleep, stress, caffeine, exercise) so you can account for them
• Don’t expect results in the first week — expect them in weeks 3–4
• Use the research on creatine for women over 50 to understand what you’re actually measuring

One thing I’d add from my patient care experience: if you start and feel worse initially — bloating, GI discomfort, slight water retention — don’t quit. Give it 10–14 days. Some people feel a transition period, especially if they start with a higher dose. The women in r/Menopause forums who asked “started creatine, feel like crap — push through or quit?” almost universally reported that sticking with it at a lower dose resolved the initial discomfort.

For dosage guidance beyond this post, I’ve covered the specifics in my piece on creatine and recovery and on what to expect from the first few weeks.

In the r/Menopause community, creatine is one of the most positively discussed supplements, with women frequently reporting that energy improvements became noticeable at the 3–4 week mark — consistent with the phosphocreatine saturation timeline documented in clinical research.

The Bottom Line From My 45-Day Log

I went into this experiment as a skeptic with a clipboard. I came out of it as a believer with data. My energy improved across all three categories I tracked. The improvements were gradual, consistent, and durable over the measurement period. They tracked closely with what the best current research predicts for postmenopausal women starting from a lower baseline.

If you’re curious about doing your own 45-day experiment, I’d encourage you to start with ATO Health Creatine Monohydrate Powder — pharmaceutical-grade, micronized, unflavored, and formulated with adults over 40 in mind. It’s what I used for my own experiment, and it’s what I continue to take daily.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to feel creatine’s effects on energy?

Most people begin noticing meaningful energy improvements between weeks 2 and 4. This is because creatine needs time to saturate muscle phosphocreatine stores — a process that takes longer in older adults and postmenopausal women whose baseline levels tend to be lower. Don’t judge creatine by your first week; give it a full month.

Will creatine give me a jittery energy boost like caffeine?

No. Creatine’s energy effect is completely different from caffeine. It works by increasing your cells’ ability to produce ATP — the energy molecule your body runs on — rather than stimulating your nervous system. The result is a steadier, more durable energy throughout the day, not a spike and crash.

I started creatine and feel worse — should I keep going?

Initial side effects like mild bloating or GI discomfort are common in the first 1–2 weeks, especially with higher doses. Try reducing to 3 grams per day for the first week before building back to 5 grams. Most women who report this experience on forums like r/Menopause find that symptoms resolve after 10–14 days. If discomfort persists beyond two weeks, consult your doctor.

Does creatine help with brain fog specifically?

Research and personal accounts suggest yes. The brain is one of the most energy-demanding organs in the body, and creatine’s role in ATP production extends to neurological function. A 2024 study in Nature Scientific Reports found that creatine supplementation helped blunt cognitive deterioration from sleep deprivation — which translates to better mental clarity even on imperfect days.

Is 5 grams of creatine per day enough, or do I need more?

For most adults over 40, 5 grams daily is the standard maintenance dose and is what most research studies use. A loading phase (20 grams/day for 5–7 days) can saturate stores faster, but it’s not required and may increase GI discomfort. I personally use 5 grams daily and found it sufficient for clear results by weeks 3–4.

Does creatine help with the fatigue that comes with menopause?

The evidence is promising. A 2025 review in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition specifically noted that postmenopausal women tend to have lower baseline creatine levels and greater potential to benefit from supplementation. The fatigue many women experience during menopause is partly cellular — reduced estrogen affects mitochondrial efficiency — and creatine directly supports that cellular energy system.

What’s the best way to track whether creatine is working for me?

Establish a 2–3 week baseline before you start. Each evening, rate your morning energy, afternoon stamina, and mental sharpness on a 1–10 scale. Note any confounders (sleep, stress, caffeine). Compare your averages at weeks 4 and 6 after starting creatine. Without a documented baseline, you’re relying on unreliable memory — and gradual improvements are easy to miss without data.

Have you tracked your energy levels before and after starting a supplement? I’d love to hear your experience — drop a comment below. And if you’re curious about how creatine connects to sleep and recovery, that’s another article worth reading before you start your own experiment.

Ready to start your own 45-day experiment?
→ Try ATO Health Creatine Monohydrate Powder — $24.95 for 500g, pharmaceutical-grade, made for adults over 40.