Nutrition Question

[BigTex]

I was under the impression that creatine just increased water retention?

One of the effects of high doses of creatine is to increase the water retention in muscles, yes. But that is not only thing it does. There's quite alot of research out there about what it does. One of the main things is to increase the rate of skeletal muscle growth and increase the brains abiltiy to remember things. The memory increasing effects are quite interesting, there was a more recent study done with vegetarians taking mild doses, the memory gains were incredible. It's a wonderful little amino acid .

Don't really want to put creatine into my body. I'd rather do this in a more natural way, although I do take a multi which includes about 150 mg of amino acids two being taurine and gluatamine.

Your going to be hard pressed to find a whey mix without it in there.

You'll be suprised at how much faster your recovery times are when using glutamine and tuarine.

1 To decrease body fat you need to consume less calories then you use.
2 To increase muscle mass you need to work the muscles and eat protein and carbs and some fats (omega-3s) to help build the muscle.

Beautiful advice, you cannot bulk when you are minimizing. Only difference I'd say is while minimizing is to stick to power lifting, not going all the way down to endurance lifting and lots of cardio.

When bulking try to take in around 20-30% protien in every meal. You'll add alot of weight but your going to be adding loads of muscle and ramping your metabolism up. So burning off the excess fat will be much simpler. When minimizing don't go crazy, cut just below what you need, your not trying to starve yourself.

So what's the deal if you work out but don't take in enough protein and/or calories?

Pain, lots and lots of pain. Not to mention your body will burn muscle before fat. Going on an anorexic binge is a good way to add more to your overall body fat % and lose tons of your strength and mass.

As a side note alot of problems with having a defined 6 pack can be caused by a high sodium diet. You may try cuting down on the salt a bit, should decrease the amount of excess water in your system and help to define your muscles more.