It’s been a long time since I wrote this but I was assuredly referring to this sentence
“So start at say 18 cal/lb and see how your caliper measurements (men should probably use abdominal, women thigh as these tend to be most representative of body fat levels) change after 2 weeks.”

So 2mm change in the representative caliper measurement. A 2mm increase over 7 sites would be irrelevant. Hope that clears it up.

Could you clarify that quote of “If they went up a little (maybe a couple of millimeters over 2 weeks)”? Is that 2mm in 14 days just on the abdominal site?

I have been dieting for some time and measuring both weight and caliper measurements and for me, my abdominal site measurement goes down roughly 1mm per kilo of bodyweight lost. Now that I want to start lifting and bulking, do you recommend I adjust my calorie intake upwards till I’m gaining 2kgs per 14 days? This seems above the usual bulking recommendation of a pound per week.

https://chriskresser.com/5-reasons-why-even-vegetarians-need-gelatin

1. Gelatin balances out your meat intake.

“Muscle meats and eggs are high in methionine, an amino acid that raises homocysteine levels in the blood and increases our need for homocysteine-neutralizing nutrients like vitamins B6, B12, folate, and choline.
We don’t want high homocysteine in our blood because homocysteine is a significant risk factor for serious diseases like heart disease, stroke, mental illness, and fractures. (This might even explain why researchers sometimes find a correlation between high meat intake and various diseases.)
Those eating lots of animal protein need adequate glycine to balance out the methionine from meat, and you’ll get that from gelatin.”

A high meat diet requires more gelatin to balance out the amino acid profile. (glycine among others in gelatin)
But she sounds like a “Paleo Kool Aid” drinker as well.

How about Ray Peat?
” Gelatin (the cooked form of collagen) makes up about 50% of the protein in an animal, but a much smaller percentage in the more active tissues, such as brain, muscle, and liver. 35% of the amino acids in gelatin are glycine, 11% alanine, and 21% proline and hydroxyproline.

In the industrialized societies, the consumption of gelatin has decreased, relative to the foods that contain an inappropriately high proportion of the antimetabolic amino acids, especially tryptophan and cysteine.”

It’s a long article. Bottom line:
“If a person eats a large serving of meat, it’s probably helpful to have 5 or 10 grams of gelatin at approximately the same time, so that the amino acids enter the blood stream in balance.”

Perhaps you can suggest a link showing this, “Paleo Kool Aid” drinker, athletes do not benefit from this?

At the kinds of protein intakes seen in athletes/Western countries, there is NO way that taurine or glycine are insufficently supplied. Stop drinking the paleo kool aid and worrying about what we used to get when we ‘ate the whole animal’. Even the native americans didn’t that.

Taurine is destroyed in cooking. While it is not a Vital Amine (Vitamin) as in your body can make it. Your body does expect it to be there and has to make it instead. I supplement this with meals. (Cheap at Amazon.)

Also
Glycine:
“Glycine is an organic compound with the formula NH₂CH₂COOH. Having a hydrogen substituent as its side-chain, glycine is the smallest of the 20 amino acids commonly found in proteins, and indeed is the smallest possible.”

When we eat the whole animal we get a lot of glycine. When we eat just the muscle some but not as much.
Glycine tends to hang out in the organs connective tissue and skin.
Supplementing might help the connective tissue keep up with the muscle growth.
Glycine is a main component in gelatin.
Think Jello. Knox makes an unflavored version.
(Also cheap and easy to get.)

I have a question about night catabolism.
Lately, I’ve read your book “The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook”, very good book, i think i’ll try The Crash Diet in the summertime maybe 😉

To the point…
You’ve written about starvation, and this is the problem which is very interesting for me.
You’ve written, that our body will take necessary protein from our body – organs and muscles, so this is catabolism – ok, i’m deal with it.
But I’ve read, that firstly, after about 12-18hours liver glycogen is emptied – ok, but 12-18h is a lot of time!
Some organs need glucose for fuel.
So can’t our body, take glycogen from liver for fuel at night, when we are sleeping?
And than, it doesn’t need to brake down our muscles, to take protein for fuel.

Where’s the problem?
Have we got night catabolism?

What’s your opinion about it?

Greetings from Poland
Michał Ryters

The supplements they use:
protein powder
fish oils
I think glutamine

That was it.

Lyle