Keto and Insulin Resistance....

   We've had a really good week. It's cooled off here significantly, with temperatures between 70 and 75 every day. It's made it nice, and we managed entirely without our air conditioning. Everything is going well with my diet, too. I keep losing weight consistently, and I'm feeling very optimistic. We've planned a hike for today, so I'll report back in next week's blog. While we're there we'll drop one of our "blessings." I don't know if I have mentioned our joint activity.  Steve and I have a lot of fun with this. He carves driftwood for me in four motifs, including fishhooks, arrowheads, clovers, and fish. The backside has a carved space for a tiny little bottle in which I put a blessing that matches the motif. The fishhook carving contains a Hawaiian blessing, the Arrowhead, a Native American blessing, the clover, an Irish blessing, and the fish, a fisherman's blessing. We place these on hiking trails that we visit together. I set up a website so people can report their find, and sometimes they even send pictures.  You can see some of them at the following website:  www.blessingsinbottles.com.  We are thrilled when we receive a report of a find.  We've received reports from several states and even in some areas worldwide. So, on our hike today, we plan to leave a fishhook blessing for somebody to find. Along with this activity, I'm continuing to write. I'm currently putting together a collection of constitutional issues and connecting them with those serving sentences for their participation in the January 6th Insurrection. Their stories demonstrate a cultlike decision to take illegal actions to demonstrate loyalty to their misguided leader, Trump.  They completely disregarded laws and placed themselves in legal and financial jeopardy.  The outcome for most of these people is tragic, but it's hard to empathize given the nature of their crimes and the damage done to our country.  Clearly, I'm looking forward to finishing this writing because it is so depressing. The next thing I plan to do is finish a memoir. It might be equally depressing.  I don't want to remember some things, but it might do me good to face my life, both the good and the bad.  On the diet front, I'm still focusing on getting to a healthy weight and maintaining it. That depends in part on countering insulin resistance with a healthy diet. As I've explained in earlier blogs, insulin is a hormone that facilitates the transport of glucose from blood into cells, causing a reduction in blood sugar. There are many causes of insulin resistance, and the underlying process is still not completely understood.  However, it can be improved or reversed with exercise, and some studies show that the keto diet is especially effective for people with insulin resistance, so it should serve me well when I discontinue semaglutide support. We'll see.