If you’ve ever taken a break from weightlifting, you may have noticed that you don’t feel as good as you did when working out. The first thought you might have is, “I must be losing muscle mass. It’s been DAYS since I’ve hit the gym.” While you lose muscle mass after you stop working out, it might not happen as quickly as you think (and that not-so-good feeling is probably from the lack of endorphins and the fact that your body likes to move!). Let’s take a look.  First, if you skip a few days here and there, don’t fret. You won’t lose muscle in a few days away from the gym. Your well-earned progress won’t come to a complete halt if you take a day (or two or three) to rest. In fact, rest days are imperative to gaining muscle mass. Weightlifting breaks down muscle so that it regrows...Read more

“You can’t pour from an empty cup.” It’s a mantra mental health professionals use to remind you to take care of yourself. Practicing self-care is essential to maintaining balance in your life- mental and physical. “Filling up your cup” can mean many different things to many people, but the important takeaway is that you can’t help others if you don’t help yourself first. While some people have a pretty good idea about when they need to take some time to practice self-care, others might not even realize that their “cup” is running low or even forget that they have a “cup” to fill in the first place! If your life is spent helping others, you’re always busy, or you have many life stressors, it’s sometimes easy to ignore your needs. Ignoring your needs over time can cause you to forget that you have needs in the first place. It might...Read more

There are two types of inflammation. Acute inflammation is your body’s response to infection, injury (such as a strained ankle), illness, or a response to things that don’t belong in your body (think of a bug bite or a splinter) and is usually painful, swollen, hot, and red. Acute inflammation happens suddenly and is temporary. Our bodies send antibodies to the injured area, producing more blood flow to accelerate healing. If you do not have any significant problems with your immune system, acute inflammation will go away as the body heals. It is treatable with rest, ice, compression, elevation (RICE), and sometimes short-term medication use (such as ibuprofen or antibiotics). Sometimes acute inflammation becomes chronic, but usually it does not.   Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, is often misunderstood. Chronic inflammation lasts for months or even years and is often not accompanied by the same pain, redness, or swelling associated...Read more

What do they have in common? What the heck does it have to do with exercise? Well, we know exercise helps us learn and improves our ability to recall information, but did you know it helps us with a different kind of memory, too? This year’s study by the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports found that surgeons, violinists, and gamers improved their fine motor skills when exercising before or after practicing their craft. The type of memory involved in performing physical tasks is different than being able to recall facts or events. We generally sum up motor memory as “it’s like riding a bike”. Some people refer to this type of memory as muscle memory; as it turns out, exercise helps our body remember this, too! Exercising before or after practicing a task improved motor memory by 10% in participants in the study done by the...Read more

Me and my mom at Starved Rock State Park. We go every year, along with my two sisters, to honor Daniel, who passed away. Our family loves hiking! Hello everyone! My name is Jen Connelly. Many may not know this, but I write and create content for Fit St. Charles’ Facebook and Instagram, and I help out with this blog. I LOVE writing about exercise and its benefits for mental health (among other things!). After about a year of doing so, I think it’s finally time for me to share my own complicated journey with exercise and mental health (plus May is Mental Health Awareness month!). It may be scary to put yourself out there, but reading about other people’s fitness journeys has always inspired me, so here we go! Exercise used to be something I dreaded. Throughout my teenage and early adult life, I made many attempts to be...Read more