Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms out there, especially to my mom, and to my Sarah! You truly are a Wonder Woman Sarah! Thank you for all you do with, and for, our family!
These are just a sampling of some of the job duties that a Mother is responsible for! Your day never really is over as a mother. You are there 24/7 for anything that may come up with the family. You are the glue holding everything together.
A special shout out to my mom as well. This pandemic has been tough for how much we have been able to spend together. But, that does not mean I don’t think of you all of the time. We all worry, just like you do. We want the best for you, and there is no question, you want, and do, the best for us. Thank you for all of the years you have invested in us kids!
Once the kids got bigger and left the house, you took over Sarah many times as a fur mama! Always someone to help take care of! Dakota loves being your new “kid”, and appreciates all of the walks everyday, no matter the weather, or temperature!
Dakota helped us yesterday by running the Avera Breast Cancer 10k, in honor of all the mother’s who have had breast cancer. Dakota ran the first 4 miles of it with us, and loves spending time with us. Sarah especially loves it because she gets to help take care of somebody else at home, besides me!
Sarah, you are always by my side as well, helping to take care of me! Running is always easier when we run together. The weather is now getting better too so we can enjoy it even more!
Thank you Sarah for all you do, for our kids, Dakota, and for me! Your tireless effort and work truly make you more than “Wonder Woman”. It truly makes you a “Mother”! Spend time with your moms as much as you can. Time really does go fast. Let them all know how much you appreciate them! Keep moving everybody!
Raml Boys with three cute calves! Corbin (5), Adam, Carson (1).
May is National Beef Month so I thought it’d be fitting to talk about this powerhouse lean protein! I get asked a lot about if beef can be part of a healthy diet and it certainly can! There are actually 29 cuts of lean beef! As many of you know, my husband Adam raises beef cattle with his dad and brother. Our sons are the 6th generation of Raml Cattle. Cattle and ranching aren’t just their jobs, it is truly their passion and they do anything in their power to make sure their cattle are healthy and well to produce a top notch protein on your plate. Ranching and farming are not easy in today’s world, but we are blessed to be able to raise our boys on the ranch and show them how hard work, perseverance, and passion can pay off.
Now you may think I am just bias, but science doesn’t lie–I’m putting on my nutrition hat now and want to share how lean red meat can be included in a heart healthy diet! Did you know that beef is 20% leaner than it was about 15 years ago? There are at least 29 cuts of lean beef which means they meet the government guidelines for lean, meaning each cut has less than 10g of total fat, less than 4.5 g of saturated fat, and less than 95mg of cholesterol (in a 3 oz serving). Lean beef is also a great source of multiple vitamins and minerals such as vitamin B12, selenium, zinc, niacin, vitamin B6, phosphorus, iron, and choline.
Here are some tips for you to make beef a part of your heart healthy meals:
• Look for key words such as “round” or “loin” …these are typically leaner cuts.
• Choose 90% or greater lean beef. This means in a 3oz serving there is less than 5g of fat in it.
• Use healthy cooking methods such as grilling, broiling, baking, roasting, or braising. The less tender cuts can be marinated in a tenderizing marinade such as salsa or light Italian dressing.
• Trim the fat! Trimming the fat before cooking will help eliminate some of the fat from the cut.
• Cook with fresh ingredients such as lemon juice, peppers, onions, garlic, and herbs instead of adding extra fat to the cut.
• Practice portion control. Select the 3-5 oz serving over the 10oz. Balance is key to a healthy diet, so be sure to include your fruits and veggies and whole grains along with your lean meat to create a healthy plate.
• All meat is required to have the nutrition content (label) posted by it in the grocery store. Be sure to use this when you’re selecting your cuts of meat and pay special attention to the total fat and saturated fat content.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of beef and explore healthy recipes check out these websites: www.beefnutrition.org and www.beefitswhatsfordinner.com.
Below are some of my favorite pictures of our world on the ranch.
Eat beef, it’s what’s for dinner!
Kelsey
Corbin checking out the show calves.
Corbin loves the baby calves! He enjoyed a break from working cattle with this little one last summer.
Tough guy ready to work those calves. 🙂
Helped his dad deliver twins last spring!Adam giving the cows some mineral. We like happy, healthy cows!
This week continues where I left off last week. I have 10 Life Lessons I learned from running distance, especially the Dopey Event 3 years ago. 4 days, 4 races. I went through the first 5 last week, so here goes the next 5!
6. Push the Boundaries: We can’t always stay in our comfort zone. Whenever we start feeling comfortable with where we are with our exercise, or running routine, we need to increase the challenge. If not, you will never find out how far you can go. This is me holding my medals for completing the marathon portion of the Dopey race, the “Goofy” medal because I did the Half Marathon and Marathon, and the coveted “Dopey” medal, for doing all 4 races over 4 days. This final day was the last 3 medals, but I earned 7 total for those 4 races.
Life Lesson: Only those willing to push the boundaries will be ready for the next challenge that comes into their life. If you are unwilling to challenge yourself, or push yourself, you will stay right where you are, which can become boring and dull in a hurry.
7. Do not burn out:
There is a reason why you need a rest day when you exercise, or at least have recovery days. If you don’t give yourself a break, things become much more turbulent, and you start to not be as efficient, become frustrated and angry, and have an even harder time getting sleep.
Life Lesson: If you continue to push yourself running, or exercising in general, without taking the time to rejuvenate, you will become less effective in everything you do. We all have to take a break, and learn to recover. Your health depends on it!
8. Cross Train:
We may have certain exercises that we like to do, but we have to be able to engage in other activities in order to work other muscles, and prevent breakdown of other muscles. Cross-training can help build up those other muscles, build endurance, and help with recovery from other activities. I have to emphasize this a lot to my running friends. We cannot just run! We have to do other things, and we have to learn to let our bodies recover.
Life Lessons: We cannot just become good, or interested in one thing. We have to have other interests, and explore other hobbies. Life can get really boring otherwise. Besides, you never know what other things you may really enjoy by exploring, and “testing the waters” of other things. It is also a great way to become more motivated in general as well.
9. To each their own:
Each runner, or athlete, (of which we are all athletes!), has their own unique physical and mental attributes. They may work out alone, or in a group, or may like walking, or biking, better. Whatever! The best exercise to do is the one you are going to do!
Life Lesson: There are many unknowns in life, and each person is unique. You have to be able to focus on your own strengths, and continue to keep working on your weakness’s. Just because somebody else may do things one way, does not mean that it may work for you. The opposite holds true as well. You may do things better than somebody else, and where you are strong at, others are not. Play to your own strength’s!!!!
10. Celebrate your success:
Whatever you set as your goal, once it is achieved, it brings about much satisfaction and joy. So celebrate it!
Life Lesson: No matter how small or big the goal, it deserves a celebration, and someone to celebrate it with! Chances are, those same people you are celebrating with helped you achieve those goals in the first place. They deserve to celebrate too! You should not need to have a reminder for this! Just do it! Then things just seem to flow much better with everything in life. You become more efficient. You enjoy life better. You appreciate your life better, and also those people in your life! Then just remember to keep moving everybody!
Warmer spring weather is finally here! With longer days and warmer temperatures brings the chance to get outside and enjoy some physical activity. Along with a well-balanced eating plan, exercise is important both for losing weight and maintaining an overall healthy body and mind.
It is recommended that adults engage in a minimum of 150 minutes each week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 90 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity a week. With planning ahead and setting aside time, you can easily fit 30-60 minutes of aerobic activity into your routine most days of the week. Examples of moderate-intensity aerobic activities: walking, water aerobics, bicycling (under 5 mph), tennis (doubles), or ballroom dancing. Examples of vigorous-intensity activities: race-walking, jogging, running, swimming laps, bicycling (faster than 10 mph), tennis (singles), or aerobic dancing. Be sure to chose an activity you enjoy doing!! I included some pictures of my son Corbin–he loves being active–running, playing tag, biking, soccer, you name it, he loves it. Sitting still is not his specialty–something we could learn from! 😉
Choose activities that you will enjoy and can fit into your daily schedule. If you are starting from little to no daily physical activity, begin with five to ten minutes per day. Then increase your duration every week by 10-minute increments until you are up to 30-60 minutes most days of the week. It is important to remember good nutrition is needed for physical performance; carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, and water are all a part of a well-balanced and healthy diet. No excuses anymore now that the weather is getting nicer!! Get out and get moving!! -Kelsey
Three years ago we were at Disney, and I participated in what is called “The Dopey Challenge”. It involves 4 different races, over 4 days. It starts on day 1 with a 5K run, then 10K run, then 1/2 Marathon, and on the 4th day, a full marathon. 48.6 miles total. You get loaded up on a bus at 3AM each day, and the races officially start at 5:30. You start off in increments of 1000 people, and then it continues every 5 minutes. For that 5K I had not even got to the start line yet at 6:30, and people were already heading back on the buses because they were done! It was an incredibly tough 4 days, but I tell you, the lessons learned from this were huge. Running has taught me many things over the last 44 years that I have been running, but this was like the ultimate in teaching. I have 10 points to make. I will do 5 today, and 5 next week. Here we go!
Finding a sense of Purpose:
This challenge was the ultimate test of one’s endurance. The marathon, at 26.2 miles, was the biggest challenge I had done before, but I had not run 3 races before it in the past. Completing this took a combination of very well thought out ingredients–training, proper sleep, hydration, strategy so that I would not go out too fast on the early races and have nothing left for the biggest distance on the last day. If I was unwilling to follow through on what I thought was a well-defined plan, I would set myself up for failure.
Life Lesson: Defining a purpose and direction is not easy for all of us, but it still needs to be done. You have to have to have the right ingredients combined in order to be a success at anything in our lives.
2. Break it Down:
If I would have looked at this challenge at only the end point, and not planned for each individual day as it came, I don’t think I would have made it. You have to break it apart in manageable pieces. Everything does not seem at it appears. You can look at something many different ways, and still see something different. If you don’t break it down into manageable pieces, the overall task will be daunting, and you will not do it.
Life Lesson: Every one of us needs to have specific sub goals, and different ways to achieve it. Nobody has one set way. You have to learn to be adaptable, and listen to your body, and everything else around you, in order to achieve your end goal, whatever that may be for you.
3. Fail and Learn early
You don’t just wake up one day and think you have all of the answers. You have to learn to make changes on the fly, and accept it. I had never done this before so I had no idea what I was capable of. Was I training too much? Not enough training? Was I letting my body recover? Was I listening to my body? Was I listening to the doubts in my head? I could go on and on. We all make mistakes, but we have to learn from them.
Life Lesson: We have to be able to analyze our failures, and learn to adapt to our plan for our goals. It is never a straight line to our end goal. There are many up’s and down’s, and zig zags, but eventually we get there. If we do not learn from our mistakes, our own personal history, we will just continue to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Why would we think that if we did not learn to adapt and change, and we kept our plan and routines the same, that the outcome would ever be any different?
4. Feedback is very important:
Distance running can be both an individual sport, and a group sport. A group sport by the support you get from others. I went on the trip with my family, and our neighbors, who are just an extension of our family. I ran the 5K with Steve Hauck; the 10K I ran alone; the 1/2 marathon also included Sarah, my twin daughters Molly and Megan, and Noah Hauck; and the marathon I ran with Carissa Hauck. I may have done all 4 events, but I had help from all of them as well to keep me going, and finish this. I think if I had done them all alone, the experience would not have been nearly as enjoyable. This support and encouragement is what goes into making me, and each of us, a better runner, or walker, etc.
Life Lesson: While it is important to have independence, and to be strong, it is equally important to have a group of people involved with you who give you support, encouragement, and feedback. This helps not only on your training, but with life’s issues in general. This leads into number 5 for today.
5. Spend time alone and in a group:
Runners are at their best when they can balance their time between solo runs, and group runs. When we are alone, we can lose ourselves in thought. When running with a group, you can learn from your peers, as well as being another ear, and mind, to bounce things off, not just about training, but life in general.
Life Lesson: Sometimes we need to be alone, to gather our thoughts, and to try and figure things out on our own. But, it is important to have other people around to learn from, to get and give support to, and to learn from, and teach to. We do not know everything ourselves. Sometimes we need to hear it from others about what has worked, and what has not, not only with training, but again, life in general. We need to both learn, and teach!
This is my T-shirt from that challenge. One of my favorites! I will bring up another 5 points next week as I continue “Dopey Life Lessons”. We all need to have challenges in order to improve ourselves. The Dopey Challenge was mine. We, and I, just need to make sure that those lessons, and choices, in general, are not “Dopey” decisions! Until next week…Keep moving everybody!
