Eat like an animal.

I'm sure you've noticed that the only truly fat animals are the ones we've domesticated. Cats and dogs. Cows, too, but we WANT them to be fat: that precious marbling in our best steaks.

In the wild, the ancestors of our Fido and Fluffy were and are lean as rawhide. Why? Because they have to chase down their supper. Our pets have only to saunter -- or waddle -- into the kitchen, where a bowl of whatever they like (or whatever we think they like) is waiting.

Just like us.

Have your ever seen, or can even imagine, a fat wolf or mountain lion? Of course not.

But the secret to their sleek physique isn't just that they may have to run all day to get a meal. No, it's because they eat only when they're hungry.

I suspect that our concept of three meals a day originated back when most of our grandmothers and grandfathers -- and their parents and grandparents -- worked at real labor all day long and needed the nourishment. Plowing the fields, chopping wood, cooking over a wood stove and trying to keep the dirt off your dirt floor: chores to wear a person down, make him/her hungry. In the morning, to prepare for the day's onerous work, at noon to keep the energy up to go face hours more in the woods and fields or at the scrubbing board and the clothes line. At evening to try to replenish all the calories lost during the day. Then to bed -- early -- to prepare for yet another day of hard work.

You know as well as I that most of us don't lead that kind of life anymore. Some of us do, and for those unfortunate souls, I say: three meals a day and snacks, too! For the rest of us, its' time to re-think the three meals a day paradigm. Yes, we did it when we had little kids, because they're growing and need all the fuel they can get, and it's always best to sit down to meals as a family.

But that doesn't cut it for us adults. We don't need that much food. We're grown. All we need is enough to counter the calories we burn every day, which probably isn't much. Most of us drive to work, then sit at a desk; we walk around to one extent or another, but we almost never run. At the end of the day, we're not so much exhausted as bored.

So we go home and eat. Six o'clock means supper. Even if we're alone or just two grown-ups together. Maybe you had a soft pretzel in the middle of the afternoon and aren't really hungry. But it's time to eat, so let's do it!

And the pounds mount up. We don't notice at first, but others do, and sooner or later someone says, "Putting on a few, huh?" or something similar that startles us. Now we have a problem: we've got to take off those pounds so we'll look the way we used to look and want to look now. But we also love to eat. Big problem.

I think there's a way to stay lean and still eat what you want. Eat like an animal. Animals, in the wild, eat when they're hungry. I'm sure you've seen National Geographic videos of lions walking right past herds of gazelles at a watering hole. Why didn't the lions pounce? Because they weren't hungry. And the gazelles knew it and went on drinking. There are also films of sharks gliding past whole schools of fish. Why didn't they attack such a tempting target? Because they weren't hungry.

Suppose you only ate when you were hungry. What would that be like? Suppose you opened the refrigerator and took out what you wanted to eat and ate it and then closed the refrigerator.
And then didn't eat again until you were hungry. I'm pretty sure you would eat less than if you sat down for a real meal, by rote, three times a day. And clean your plate, remember?

If the lion or the shark can pass by easy prey because they're not hungry, you and I can pass by the the fast food place or the ice cream stand.

Eat like an animal. In other words, when you're hungry. And because you've freed yourself from the very unhealthy three meals a day concept, you can indulge in whatever you want with no guilt. A lion absolutely gorges on that gazelle. I've heard that pythons can swallow a whole pig and then lie still for a month while the meal is absorbed.

A double-cheeseburger is sometimes just the thing we crave, but give it a few hours to dissolve, and don't think about eating again until you're actually hungry. That may be your big meal of the day.

It's very freeing to think that you can eat anything you want if you don't do it on a schedule. A chocolate eclair from your favorite bakery? Go for it -- especially since you skipped breakfast and only had a Swiss cheese on rye and an apple for lunch (and didn't eat half the apple).

You are your calorie count, and it doesn't matter if you get it three times a day, on schedule, eating food you don't necessarily like, or if you get it whenever you're hungry during the day or night, opting for something good. Count 'em up, if you must, and then decide how you want to get 'em. I'm in favor of what I want, when I want it. I won't eat as often, and I won't eat as much, but I will so much more love what I'm eating!

Pass the gazelle, would you?