Creatine For Women: Health & Lifestyle Benefits Beyond the Gym Bro Myth

Creatine isn’t just for gym bros—midlife women are discovering its health and lifestyle benefits, and the results are impressive! In this episode, I break down what Creatine is, how it works, and why it’s becoming a go-to supplement for women over 40.

We explore how Creatine can boost strength, energy, recovery, lean muscle, and even brain health—without “bulking up.” I also share my personal journey from skepticism to trying it myself, plus tips for choosing a high-quality supplement.

Whether you’re hitting the gym, taking exercise classes, or just want more energy and focus in midlife, this episode gives you the lowdown on how Creatine can support your health and easily be incorporated into your lifestyle. 

Resources & Links:

• Creatine recommendation: HERE
• Mimi Evans’ blog on Creatine: HERE
• Rachel Hollis podcast discussion: HERE

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💌 Let’s connect
If you’d like to share your thoughts or your own midlife reinvention story, come find me on Instagram @bethgoodrham
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📖 Related blog post: Should Women Take Creatine? Benefits, powders & creatine gummies

🎧 Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode—where we’ll keep exploring ways to thrive in midlife throught our health and lifestyle, with confidence, grace, and humour.

Transcript

Speaker: 0:00

I dunno if any of you listen to the Mel Robbins podcast, but I always love the way she opens her podcast and goes, Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to another edition of the podcast. So here we go. Hey, it's your friend Beth, and welcome to another edition of the podcast. Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, what an idiot. Yeah, I can't really disagree with you on that one, but anyway, made me chuckle. So today in this podcast episode, we are going to be talking about creating for women over 40, not just for Gym Bros anymore, but before we start, you might wonder. Why on Earth have started the podcast Again? You might not, 'cause you might not have ever listened to it before and you might be listening to it now and thinking, well, frankly, I wish you hadn't. But anyhow, what I noticed when I was getting my emails from Buzz Sprout, which is like the podcast host. Place was that people were still listening to the podcast quite a lot, even though I wasn't releasing any new episodes, and I did have quite a few people tell me how much they really liked it. They'd stopped me in the street and tell me that that they liked it, or that they liked listening to my voice, which was very sweet of them. And I kind of found a way to make it work for me. So let me just tell you that this podcast is going to be. Kind of bare bones insofar as there's not going to be music at the start. There's not going to be music at the end. It's not going to be edited. I will trip up over my words. I will use the wrong words. I will use the wrong year, month, day of the week, whatever. Just if you're happy to roll with me on that and give me a bit of grace, that would be fab because that is what will be happening. There won't be any ads, although I may let you know about the discount code that I have 'cause that can be quite useful for you. But hopefully you will be good with that. And the reason I've decided to do it that way is because it just takes too long to do it the other way. By the time you've added the music at the start and then finish and edited it all and what have you, it takes about half a day. Frankly, this girl just does not have time for that. But I do want to put podcast episodes out there. So the way we're going to think about it, ladies, if this is okay with you, is it's like putting the effort into making a really nice meal. But sometimes there might be a chip in the crockery, the cutlery might not match. You might not have proper napkins, you might have a little bit of kitchen roll. The content is good, as in the meal is good, and hopefully the content of the podcast episode. It's good, but the bits around the edge might just not be quite as polished as they could be. I'm okay with that. I hope you are okay with that. And I think as 1970s people pleaser girls, then it's not a bad way to approach life. I'm not saying that we shouldn't put effort in and produce a polished quality product, but if the only way we can do that is to cut corners elsewhere, then that's okay. I can live with that. In fact, that's how I spend most of my life. So we're just gonna roll with that for now. I was gonna say something else about it. Oh, yes, I know. The other thing that I'm doing. As well as clearing my throat somewhat annoyingly, because let me tell you why I took my magnesium tablets this morning, and they seem to be a bit stuck. I don't think I took enough water with them. So I feel like I've got a bit of something lodged in my throat, which is quite annoying, but I'll try not to clear it too often. Um, so the other way that I'm going to do this is to write a blog post that goes along with the podcast because I was already writing the blog posts and I thought, well, they act as a brilliant framework. Around which to record a podcast. So when they're published, I will cross link to both. So if you read the podcast, you'll have a link to the blog, and if you read the blog, you'll have a link to the podcast. So if you would prefer to listen because you're out on a walk on, if you would prefer to read because you just like to consume contact that way, you've now got two options. It just means that the podcast version will have a little bit more meat on the bones than. The blog version, so I hope that's okay and they will have slightly different titles. Total transparency here. The reason for that is when I'm writing a podcast, I use tools to help me find out which keywords to use for the purposes of search engine optimization. All a bit techy. All a bit boring, but sometimes it means that the blog post titles have to be a little bit more strategically written than the podcast titles, which can be a little bit more fun. But they are the same thing in essence. So this podcast is called Creatine for Women Over 40, not just for Jim Bros anymore. And I don't know about you, but it seems that if we open any magazine or we listen to a podcast or we watch anything on Instagram. Then creatine is everywhere at the moment. It's either creatine powder or creatine gummies. It's suddenly gone crazy and it seems as though the world and his wife are jumping on the creatine powder bandwagon. There's endorsements by celebrities everywhere. We'll come to those in a minute. There's personal trainers talking about it. There's doctors talking about it. There's physiotherapist talking about it. There's content creators talking about it. There's just no getting away from the creating debate. And I thought, do you know what? I'm not a doctor, as we all know, but what I can do and what I have done in the blog post and which I'll refer to on here, is I've pulled some different resources together so that if you're just starting off on that ine journey and you're thinking. I don't really know where to go to find out about it because lots of things are paid endorsements or I'm not quite sure that I trust these people. Then I've pulled some resources together to at least get you started thinking about it. If that's something that you want to do, I take it. I've only just started taking it probably, I think I'm on day three now, but I just thought I'd share what I'd found along the way because it might just make your life a little bit easier. So. Let's start. So back in the day, I always like to do a little bit of a rewind. I've got a lot of rewinding I can do these days back in the day, and I'm talking about eighties, nineties, and naughties here. The only reference we ever had to creatine was in relation to Jim Bros. My recollection. And it could be a little bit hazy, is that it was talked about in hush tones in the same way that steroids were and that it was perceived as slightly being on the dark side using CD gyms by guys who wanted to get huge muscles quickly. But that really, it was something that we should steer while clear of. So that's my recollection from. Way, way, way, way back then. But then the first time I became of creating more recently was back in December, 2024. I was talking to a personal trainer called Mimi Evans, who I know, she's actually my friend's daughter. And I was just chatting to her about a few business things and, and she was telling me about Reine because she works really, really hard on her physique, on her muscles, on her weightlifting, and she does lots of personal training with women as well, but she is a brilliant advocate for it and because she's my friend's daughter, because I've known her a long time, I was like, oh, I'm going to listen to you. You know what you are talking about. She wrote a blog post called The Benefits of Taking Creatine for Women, which I have linked to. In my blog post that goes with this podcast episode, and I'll link to it below in the show notes So I'm going to read just a little bit of what she wrote in her article, but it is definitely worth reading the article for the full read. So I am reading now, I. Just bear with me on that. I know it can sound a bit dull, but if this is a fact finding mission that we're on, then it's good to know the facts. So it says, creatine is a naturally occurring compound found in small amounts in food like meat and fish, and is synthesized by our bodies. So it is something that we do come across. This is me annotating in our food, naturally stored primarily in muscle tissue. It plays a crucial role in producing energy during high intensity activities. Creatine supplements typically in the form of creatine. Monohydrate help to saturate the muscles, providing a readily available energy source for improved performance. Then she goes on to say. The benefits of creatine for women are equally as impactful as they are for men. Here are a few ways in which creatine can impact fitness, health, and wellbeing in women. So the first thing that she talks about is improving strength and power, and apparently it helps to fuel muscles during high intensity, short duration activities like sprinting or weightlifting. She says, for women looking to build strength studies have found that creatine leads to noticeable strength gain and increase in gym performance to enhance overall power, which frankly sounds pretty good to me. Enhanced muscle recovery. So women who take creatine are reported to recover faster from intense workouts by replenishing energy stores and reducing muscle damage, creatine can help you bounce back quicker and stay consistent with your training again, sounds like a bit of a win-win. It offers support for lean muscle development. So this is what Mimi says. It is a common myth that creatine can make you bulky. It supports the development of lean muscle mass with enhanced metabolism. This improves your overall body composition by allowing you to eat more while putting on less fat, as long as you're building muscle. Again, liking the sound of that. And then she goes on to talk about improved brain health and cognitive function, and I think there's gonna be a lot more research done around this. Just have that sneaky suspicion. Mimi says, research suggests that creatine has neuroprotective properties. Women can experience benefits of this, such as better focus, memory retention, and reduced mental fatigue. Oh, yes, please. In her closing thoughts, she said. Creatine is a versatile, evidence backed supplement with many benefits for women of all ages, but that in summary is what she said. So that was in December last year. And then after that I didn't really hear that much more about creatine. I suspect that life got overtaken by collagen and other things, but it was kind of on my radar as being something that I should look into further. And then suddenly it seemed to be being talked about everywhere. So more recently, Rachel Hollis, I dunno if you listened to her. She's talked about. Taking creatine I've linked to her podcast episode in the blog. Suffice to say she's a huge fan, and it's worth listening to her podcast because again, she's not a doctor. She's not endorsed to take any particular product, but she did try it out because she recently got married and her husband started taking it, and she noticed the benefits he was getting from it and thought that she would give it a whir too. So that's always quite a good way to come into things, I think. But she really, really rated it, and that's quite a nice impartial view of what she thought about it. And then only this week I was talking to another personal trainer who asked me whether I was taking creatine. I'm part of this new health program that's been set up locally and. He asked me whether I was taking creatine as part of my, fitness assessment, and he specifically recommended it for me. So I ordered one actually that Mimi recommended to me that's available on Amazon. It's not super expensive. It is something like eight pounds for about 83 servings or something like that. So it's really inexpensive. And like I say, I've been taking it for a few days now. What I did do before I ordered the powder was the reine powder was take a look at all the reviews on Amazon, which I always do, and they were really, really positive. So women talked about having so much more energy as well as how they feel stronger and can lift more in the gym. They also talked about. I'm trying to think now. I don't want to give you the wrong information here. This is what I mean about not being highly polished around the edges. It was definitely surrounding strength, energy, power being more mentally alert and just feeling better about themselves. That was the general gist of those reviews, but it's definitely worth taking a look at those. As I've said already, it isn't expensive. The effects seem to be felt quite quickly. And with so much positive publicity surrounding it, I do think it's worth taking a look and researching a little bit more. If it's something that sounds, if it appeals to you and I accept that, that may not. So the one that I have ordered is by a brand called Free Soul. And it's pure creatine and apparently it's creatine monohydrate that we need to be taking. That is the best one. And I really like this one because there's no additives, there's no fillers. It's vegan. Not that that matters to me too much, but one thing that did matter to me was that there was no added sugar because I do follow a really, really low sugar diet, and I didn't want to get spikes because of quitting that I was taking it. So in terms of who takes what and what are people saying about it, I wanted to do some more research as well and just see which celebrities were endorsing which brands, and see if I could dig around and find out a little bit more information. So my research revealed that Davina McCall takes eight Ancient and brave creatine, which I've linked to my blog post. And there's lots of reviews, which I've linked to so that you can read what people are saying about it, and they really do seem to rate it very highly. People do seem very pro it. There's also a great article under Vineyard Taylor's willpower website, which I've linked to in the blog post as well. Now Dya Taylor, she's got a really good book called Future-Proofing, which I read in the summer and she recommends so many different things that we should and could be doing at our age to not necessarily just make us live as long as possible, but to live as healthy as possible for as long as possible. The article on her website goes into great depths about all the questions you might have looping around in your head when it comes to creatine. So that's definitely worth a read. And the same article also links to other articles as well. So I don't wanna get you too confused and take you down too many rabbit holes just listening to this in itself. You may think, okay, it's worth a try, but. If you're somebody who likes to do lots and lots of different research about things, then there's lots of resources in this blog post that I'm referring to that you can go and take a closer read out when you've got 10 minutes, 20 minutes, one evening, snuggled up in a corner. So Divinia Taylor's website, the article on there. That says it also packs a punch when it comes to a whole tool box full of benefits. Have I got that right? A whole tool box full of benefits? Yes, that's right. It seems that it can provide protection for the brain. Gerd up your thought. It was going to say loins, but it didn't. It says effort to guard against sarcopenia. That's the muscle wastage you see in older generations. I think that's how you say sarcopenia. I could have got that wrong, but. If that's what it is, could steer people away from depression keep you in more years in health as you age, improve cognitive function and help you exercise in conditions there are a little more heat challenged. Now, the heat challenged ones probably not so much for us, especially for most of the year, but it's interesting what they're saying about cognitive function. Of course, I think there is the elephant in the room, which I alluded to briefly in Mimi's article about women being scared that they're going to bulk up. But this is my take on it. First, it's really hard for women to bulk up to the point that they wouldn't be happy with their physique. I think you'd have to be really, really intentional about getting to the stage where you were thinking, I don't like how I look. It would involve lifting a lot of weights and eating a lot of the right in inverted commas kinds of food. But secondly, it's not gonna happen overnight. We are not going to go to bed one night and wake up the next day with muscles the size of the Hulk or anyone else you'd like to think of with huge muscles. And so like any things in life. I think if you're heading in a direction that you don't want to head in, you just ease off, step back, pivot, take advice, and problem solved. So I wouldn't personally worry about that too much. I think it's a situation that a is unlikely to arrive because it would take a lot of intent to bulk up to the point that you weren't happy. Also, if you think you are heading in that direction, you can just take advice to scale things back. There is the debate about creating powder or creating gummies. That was something else that I looked into because you can take it in both forms and I think there's pros and cons for both. I think when it comes to the gummies, the positives are that they're convenient and that they taste good. This may mean that you are likely to adopt them more easily as part of a daily routine if you're just kind of carrying them around in your bag or something. Or if you're traveling, they're better for that potentially. When I say better, marginally, more convenient, the cons of them is that they're more expensive. It's harder to measure the dose accurately, and the body doesn't absorb the creatine as efficiently and they've got added sugar in them. So I wouldn't be going near those, but I can see why gummies of all sorts of different things are really popular now. So, you know, I think it's really important to understand yourself and you're starting something new. And if you've already got a couple of gummies lined up that you take regularly, and that is a habit of yours, then to add another gummy on the end in form of creatine is. Is likely to mean that you will continue with that habit. Whereas if you've got two gummies lined up and then you suddenly start to add in some powder that you have to measure and take it in some water, you might just not do it. So I am such a fan of understanding ourselves and going for the low hanging fruit in life, the easiest option to get to the place that we want to get to. So if for you that looks like gummies. Brilliant. If you, if like me, you mix up a glass of water in the morning and put your MCT oil in it and you put your, collagen in it, then having another glass next to it with. Creatine in it is no big deal. I'm gonna take it. So do whatever works for you and make it easy. 'cause life can be difficult enough without these things on top. So the pros of the creatine powder that it's cheaper and potentially more effective. And then the cons are that it involves measuring it out. Sometimes they come with a little scoop. Mine didn't. So I just need to figure that one out actually, so that I'm not varying the amount you match each day. I'm just taking a teaspoon full at the moment, and the one that I take is. Taste free. And it's a little bit gritty at the bottom, but absolutely nothing to worry about. You know, it is really, really easy to take. Some of them have a flavor, meaning that it might be a bit more challenging to establish it as part of your routine, but you know, probably not. So, as I've mentioned before, the sensible workaround would be to know yourself well, to make taking it as easy as possible, and just to give it a whirl and see how you feel and see whether you notice any benefits. If you're somebody that goes to the gym, I guess potentially you are more likely to notice it. Because that's what it's designed for. Short, sharp burst of activity. You might notice the effect more markedly than somebody who doesn't work out in that way. Or if you're somebody that does sprints or hill sprints, which is something I'm trying to get back into, says she crying, then I might notice that. But in general, I think just maybe give it a one and see how you get on if you are even vaguely tempted, so I will keep you posted on how I get on with mine. If you've got any comments or any questions, please just come and message me on Instagram at Beth Goodrow, or I'll open up the comments underneath the blog post. So. Take a look there. I hope that you find the combination of the blog post and the podcast helpful. I don't want to add confusion, but whilst I was spending all the time writing the blog post, I thought, well, I may as well turn it into a podcast episode. And that kind of seemed to make sense just because people like to consume content in different ways and get different things from it. And if you know of anyone who you think could benefit from the podcast or the blog post and the resources and the references referred to in it, just feel free to pass it on. Feel free to ask them to message me if there's anything they want to know, and I will of course do anything that I can to help. So I hope you found this little roundup helpful. I hope you're having a great day and that your week has got off to a good start or if the weekend's approaching when you're listening to this, that you've got a nice weekend lined up. And thanks so much for being here. It is lovely to be back and I'm having lots of fun doing things this way. So yeah. Nice to be with you again. Okay, you take care, love, and bye for now.