Another Obesity Question. Please advise.

I know this has been discussed a lot as I have been searching through threads. One of my babies has an obesity problem. All his siblings weigh about 7.5 lbs or so but he weighs 13.6. I feel so badly for letting him get into this shape. He has issues with getting struvite crystals so he is on a special food (Hills c/d canned). Normally, I give him about a tablespoon full A.M. & P.M. and he free feeds dry food (royal canin 34) the rest of the time. He usually just licks the Hills around not really eating much of it and then when I let him out of the large pet carrier (multi cat household) he runs out waiting for me to put the dry food out. I plan on consulting my vet in the morning for advice although I am not sure she knows much about nutrition but hopefully she can help me. In the meantime, I am hoping to get any advice you all can give to help me help him. I have googled and searched through so many websites trying to figure out how many calories he should be consuming a day but the formulas vary so greatly that I don't know what to do. Maybe I should just not worry about portioning (since he hardly ever cleans his dish) and just take his bowl up when he is finished. I am at a loss. What is a safe weight loss per week or month? How much should I feed him? I don't know the first thing about what to do but I want to get my baby back to healthy weight.

If you take a look at my recent thread about my foster kitty some of your questions are answered there:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/245236/mickey-my-27-lbs-foster-and-his-journey-back-to-a-healthy-weight

Seeing his picture might also make you feel better about your "obese" baby. 

The toughest question is how much to feed them to start with. The shelter vet said to start with how ever much he would eat if he were normal weight. OK, so how much is that??? It varies with the cat and the food. Since I knew I was going to be feeding him Fancy Feast at least to start and I knew that an average sized adult would eat about 6 oz of it a day, that is what I started Mickey at.

You can just that a stab at a starting amount and then just closely monitor his weight. Weight loss in the amount of 1-2% of his current body weight per week is considered safe. If he isn't losing weight at the amount you are feeding, decrease it by 10%. Keep doing that until he starts losing.

If you don't have a good scale you should get one. You really need to closely monitor his weight. You don't want him to lose too fast and of course you want to make sure he actually is losing.

since he likes Royal Canin dry, have you tried the Royal Cain Indoor Light 40? low cal and high protein.

It was d/d for allergies, but Wilbur and Patricia liked wet Royal Canin. For some reason they hated the dry version of it though. Only Wilbur needed d/d food, but Patricia liked it too, so I had no reason to sepreate them.

The biggest thing is to stop free-feeding the dry food. Free-feeding kibble is probably the #1 cause of cat obesity. Some kitties just don't know when to stop! :lol3:

Willowy said:

The biggest thing is to stop free-feeding the dry food. Free-feeding kibble is probably the #1 cause of cat obesity. Some kitties just don't know when to stop!

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Actually, just don't feed dry food at all. It is full of crap cats don't need and that makes them fat.

Wilbur is a purrfect example of this. Every time he heard me get food out of the pantry, he ran to the bowls, so even if I was not free-feeding it to him, he would have eaten too much because some was for Patricia. He was the dominant cat, so if Patricia was waiting for food and I gave it to her when Wilbur was on the same floor, he got the first bite. He also taught me eating food with fewer calories does not help at all when it is available 24/7 because he ate more often than the girls, so I agree free-feeding is a big no-no for overweight cats.

Willowy said:

The biggest thing is to stop free-feeding the dry food. Free-feeding kibble is probably the #1 cause of cat obesity. Some kitties just don't know when to stop! :lol3:

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Yes, and it is best to remove the kibble from his diet altogether. The c/d canned isn't the best for him either, but to prevent the struvite crystals, you need the low acid pH. c/d targets a neutral urine pH. This can be done via diet with higher quality (grain free, meat-based, low carb, limited ingredient) foods, but it does take a little work.

Here is information that I think you will find very helpful in trying to help your baby lose weight: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity

Here is a study of the impact of a wet food diet on energy intake (wet food helps fat cats lose weight): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21728852

Good luck, and feel free to ask ANY questions!

LDG said:

Here is a study of the impact of a wet food diet on energy intake (wet food helps fat cats lose weight): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21728852
 

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Wow! I knew it was easier to get cats to lose weight on an all wet diet but I didn't know there was a study to back that up. 

EI was significantly decreased for the WW diet (mean ± SD, 1,053.0 ± 274.9 kJ/d), compared with EI for the LW diet (1,413.8 ± 345.8 kJ/d)

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So with the wet diet the cats ate 250 +/- 65 calories a day and with the dry diet it was 337 +/- 82 calories a day. That's a *huge* difference!

No wonder cats on a dry only diet are more likely to get fat!

mschauer said:

Wow! I knew it was easier to get cats to lose weight on an all wet diet but I didn't know there was a study to back that up. 


So with the wet diet the cats ate 250 +/- 65 calories a day and with the dry diet it was 337 +/- 82 calories a day. That's a *huge* difference!

No wonder cats on a dry only diet are more likely to get fat!

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:nod: Yep! They eat more calories. And while the study didn't address the composition of those calories, the kibble-calories are far more likely to be from carbohydrates, which compounds the problem, I think.

LDG said:

Yep! They eat more calories. And while the study didn't address the composition of those calories, the kibble-calories are far more likely to be from carbohydrates, which compounds the problem, I think.

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Actually the "dry" food was a freeze dried version of the wet food. So, same food, just one with water and one without. Interesting, eh?

Oh that's right! I'd forgotten that! Important control in the study - the ONLY difference was water content.

LDG said:

Oh that's right! I'd forgotten that! Important control in the study - the ONLY difference was water content.

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I thought another reason not to feed dry food is it has more carbs.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

I thought another reason not to feed dry food is it has more carbs.

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As Laurie said:

LDG said:

... the kibble-calories are far more likely to be from carbohydrates, which compounds the problem, I think.

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But with regards to the study, the nutrient profiles of the wet and dry foods was identical. The only difference was the water content.

With regards to most but not all commerical dry foods, yes they are more likely to be higher in carbs than most canned foods.

Some cats, including mine, just can't handle free feeding.

Weruva is a great diet for overweight kitties. Just avoid the varieties with carrageenan in them.