Day 6 — hangovers, water weight, and a multivitamin dilemma

What I ate today. - **Lunch:** a salmon sandwich. - **Dinner:** simple egg fried rice. Light, because my stomach wasn't fully recovered.

No breakfast. Couldn't face it.

What I took. Same stack — **creatine 5 g** and one **multivitamin** with a meal. Day 6.

What happened at the gym. Went *before* the drinking, which was the only smart decision I made yesterday. Did push-ups, pull-ups, bench press, and Romanian deadlifts. Skipped boxing — wanted to save energy for the night out.

The session itself was fine. Nothing record-breaking, but I hit my sets.

Then I drank. A lot. And this morning, the bill came due.

The creatine water weight — gone overnight. Here's the thing I've been thinking about all day. For the past week, creatine has been pulling water into my muscles. I could feel it — that slightly fuller, tighter look, the better pump. It was subtle but real.

One heavy night of drinking and I woke up feeling flat. Dehydrated. Like someone had pulled the plug and let all that intramuscular water drain out. My face looked puffy from the alcohol, but my muscles felt *deflated* in a way they haven't since before I started creatine.

I don't have DEXA scans or body-composition data to prove it. This is pure n=1 observation. But the contrast was sharp enough that I noticed it immediately.

Alcohol is the worst supplement I've ever taken. I've been experimenting with creatine, multivitamins, timing my meals, tracking my weight. And in one night, alcohol undid more of that progress — or at least *felt* like it did — than any missed pill ever could.

- Dehydration directly competes with creatine's mechanism (water retention in muscle cells). - Sleep quality was trash. Woke up at 4 AM, couldn't fall back asleep. - Appetite was off all day. I normally struggle to eat enough; today I didn't want to eat at all. - Energy was down. The afternoon drag I've been fighting? It came back with reinforcements.

If there's one thing this week has taught me, it's that no supplement can outwork alcohol's negatives. Not creatine, not a multivitamin, not anything.

The multivitamin dilemma. Lately I've been wondering whether the multivitamin is the right call, or if I should switch to **high-dose individual vitamins** — specifically C and D separately.

The logic: - A multivitamin is convenient and covers bases, but the doses of each individual nutrient are moderate. - Vitamin C at 500–1000 mg and Vitamin D at 2000–4000 IU are cheap, well-studied, and might give me more of what I actually want (immune support, mood, bone health) than a multi's smaller amounts. - The multi might be giving me things I don't need in trace amounts, while under-delivering the things I do.

I haven't decided yet. I'll keep thinking about it and maybe read a bit more before I make the switch. If I do change, I'll log the reasoning here.

Weight update — 80.5 kg. Up slightly from 80 kg. Could be the alcohol bloat, could be actual weight, could be noise. Not reading into it yet. The goal is still 85 kg, and the honest truth remains: **eating enough is harder than the workouts**.

Overall condition. **Below baseline.** Not because of the supplements — they had nothing to do with today's rough state. Purely self-inflicted via alcohol. The creatine flatness is the most interesting data point; it made me realize how much that water-retention effect was actually contributing to how I looked and felt.

Back to normal tomorrow. No more drinking for a while. Lesson learned.