Thanks for the welcome!

I have great news: I'm up to normal human body temperature this morning and the scale budged for the first time in months.

I have a freezer full of salmon (not a preferred choice of Ray Peat's), but I prepared a slab last night using coconut oil instead of my usual method of covering it with salsa. I also followed up with a pudding I made with unflavored gelatin, whole milk and a touch of cocoa and cinnamon (no added sugar). I had a cup of sweet potatoes and salad greens as well. I went to bed feeling enormous, but my stomach is visibly flatter this morning, and I'm down 1.5 lbs.

Ron, Here's a link: http://raypeat.com/articles/aging/tryptophan-serotonin-aging.shtml and a quote from half way down the page:

In the traditional diet, rather than just eating muscle meats, all the animal parts were used. Since collagen makes up about 50% of the protein in an animal, and is free of tryptophan, this means that people were getting about half as much tryptophan in proportion to other amino acids when they used foods such as “head cheese,” ox-tails, and chicken feet.

While some of the toxic effects of an excess of individual amino acids have been investigated, and some of the protective or harmful interactions resulting from changing the ratios of the amino acids have been observed, the fact that there are about 20 amino acids in our normal diet means that there is an enormous number of possibilities for harmful or beneficial interactions.

This is what spurred my decision to consume gelatin along with the salmon I had for dinner last night. Today I'm going shopping for meat on the bone. I'm not sure if I'm quite ready to spring chicken feet on my family though.