Billy's weight loss journey (well, maybe)

LDG said:

I don't know if this is a factor or not, but my youngest cat is either five or six, and four are 10. And even though they're more active now, running around and playing in an RV still makes them most likely not as active as kitties in a larger space.

Click to expand...

Could be. One of Coco's favorite things to do is to start in my bedroom, sprint through the living room, dining room, kitchen, back to the living room then up an 8 foot tall kitty tower. Then she comes down the tower and snuggles in my lap. 

Just wondering how you all weigh your cats? I have a newer digital scale, but it apparently isn't sensitive enough, because if I weigh myself and then pick up each kitty and weigh them with me, it invariably tells me they all weigh 10 pounds and I know that's not true. 

I think it is best to use a good baby scale. They are more accurate. Human scales usually only claim to have an accuracy of +/- 10% (or is it 5%?)..

The meat on the chicken quarters, chicken wing drummettes, and turkey drumsticks is always stripped off the bone before being divided into six fairly equal portions (eyeballed, not weighed).

Each cat has his / her own plate, they are always fed chunks (I can usually strip the meat off the bone in two to four swipes of the knife), and two of the cats eat on a four foot long, narrow table, while the other four are crated on the floor for meals.

I do have a large home and the cats are quite active, but I hesitate to believe that could be the sole cause for such a wide disparity. Three of the cats will celebrate their sixth birthday next month, one is five, and the last two are four. 

Maybe it's a combination of all of the aforementioned factors.

LDG, cats crave routine and it comforts them to no end to have it. I wouldn't, if I were you, start feeding them at irregular hours. If any of them are nervous kitties, they may become anxious if they suddenly think they can't "know" when - or if - they'll be fed. You know?

Such an interesting discussion!

AC

P.S. I'll post pics later tonight or tomorrow.  :-}

Good point, AC. :nod:

Thanks for adding that, mschauer. I was wondering.

And yes, very interesting discussion!

OK, just a quick update one week into the random-amount-of-quantity-of -food fed to Billy at meals. :lol3: I don't know if it's helping at all, because I don't have a scale. After a month, I'll probably take him to get weighed.

BUT.... he is definitely confused by the food switch-ups. But it doesn't appear to be stressing him at all. In fact, after he eats - no matter the size of the meal - he just sits there at his bowl now and cleans. I still have to keep an eye on him to ensure he doesn't try to finish up someone's food if they're eating slowly (Lazlo and Spooky are usually those culprits). But I don't have to police him now as actively! :lol3:

LDG said:

BUT.... he is definitely confused by the food switch-ups. But it doesn't appear to be stressing him at all. In fact, after he eats - no matter the size of the meal - he just sits there at his bowl now and cleans. I still have to keep an eye on him to ensure he doesn't try to finish up someone's food if they're eating slowly (Lazlo and Spooky are usually those culprits). But I don't have to police him now as actively!

Click to expand...

That's  a good start! 

If I have this right you are feeding him the same amount of food over some period of time but you are throwing in some light (amount wise) meals on occasion but then the other meals are increased by the amount that was taken from the light meals. Right? 

Yep! I haven't reduced his total intake. He was eating 3 oz a day, which I'd increased to 3.6 recently (1.2 oz per meal), but that hasn't been for long. So this is working out to be a little more than 3 oz per day, but not the 3.6oz.

This is what it's looked like so far:



Oh - ignore the menu. We're off schedule until I go shopping and order a few things from HT. :lol3: They're getting a lot more ground stuff than normal because it's what I have on hand.

IT WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


OK. I was wrong. He didn't weigh 16 pounds. He weighed 15 pounds, 5 ounces. I took him in, put him on the scale - and it said he weighed 14 pounds 9 ounces. I couldn't believe it. So I grabbed one of the vet techs and weighed him again. 14 pounds, 6 ounces. We picked him up, and put him down again. 14 pounds, 6 ounces.

I had them log it as 14 pounds, 9 ounces. Not sure why. But it looks like he lost one ounce shy of a pound - and from ONLY CHANGING THE WAY I FEED THE MEALS. No food reduction. There MAY have been a calorie reduction, because I tried to make the "small" meals occur when I was feeding things like lamb, pork, or venison, and make the large meals when I was feeding gizzards, etc.

But apparently... this works!

So, basically, his metabolism was shot

Well, that was the whole speculation since you brought it up! :lol3: The question became... what to do about it?

...and apparently, this helps! It might be a little early to say it's "the answer," but it's certainly PART of the answer.

Next - I start switching him from salmon oil to krill oil! :cross:

That's awesome.  I will have re-read this entire thread to see what you did exactly and possibly try this at some point with my monster :-) Congrats!!!!! I'd give anything to get Ulysses in the 14lb range. lol

LDG said:

I had them log it as 14 pounds, 9 ounces. Not sure why. But it looks like he lost one ounce shy of a pound - and from ONLY CHANGING THE WAY I FEED THE MEALS. No food reduction. There MAY have been a calorie reduction, because I tried to make the "small" meals occur when I was feeding things like lamb, pork, or venison, and make the large meals when I was feeding gizzards, etc.

But apparently... this works!

Click to expand...

That's fantastic! 

But you say you're not sure there wasn't a reduction in calories? So how do you know if the weight loss was from alternating meal sizes or from a reduction in calories??? 

It could be a combination of both. But we already know a reduction in calories alone didn't cause him to lose weight, as his weight remained the same with a reduction in calories alone.

When we started on raw in January, he was eating 4.5 ounces of food per day. He was walked down to 3 ounces from Jan to March/April. That had no impact on his weight. And he ate 3 ounces of food per meal (3x a day) from April - July.

I had just bumped him up to 3.6 ounces - but only for a week or so - when this idea came up. With the "meal amount switch up," his meals averaged 3.3 ounces of food - so 30% more than he'd been eating, on average, for the prior four months.

So while it's possible a calorie reduction occurred, the vet and I don't think it was much of one - if there was any calorie reduction at all. I don't know for sure.

Personally (and the vet agrees), I think the 30% increase in the amount of food probably offset any potential calorie reduction from feeding smaller portions of the higher-calorie foods (because the smallest meal I fed was 0.75 ounces, where each meal previously had been one ounce).

But I definitely didn't make lamb, pork, or duck hearts one of the 1.5 or 2 ounce meals.

Mickey's weight loss seems to be slowing down. I think it is mostly due to him getting less exercise but I'm having a hard getting getting him to exercise. When he gets a new toy he is all excited and will run after it but after a couple of play sessions he isn't as excited and doesn't run after it.He just plays while staying in one spot. He is still losing but I really want him to lose at least 4 oz a week. It looks like he has slowed to 2 or 3 a week.

Did you stick pretty much with the schedule above (post #48)? That is, randomly feeding small and large meals but making sure you feed the same amount on a weekly basis?

Yep. I never fed him less than 0.75 ounces, but I did definitely sometimes feed as much as 2 ounces in one meal. At first I was averaging it out over 3 days, but I ended up making it average out over 4-5 for the most part. There were some days he'd have 0.75 ounces for all meals of one day, but I never went more than 4 meals in a row at that small amount. I never gave him a day of just 1.5 ounces - but he definitely had some days where he had 2 meals of 1.5, 1.75 or 2 ounces in the same day. But basically I just kept throwing different amounts at him, and definitely NOT just alternating meals.

This is SO EXCITING, especially since I'm already trying the same thing with Darko.  And I'm doing just like you are, just sporatically giving him different amounts, one meal might be  1.6 oz, then the next might only be .5 oz, etc.  I don't mind dropping below the .75 oz mark for a single meal, since he gets 3 in a day.  So far, though, I have still be feeding him 3.6 - 3.75 oz per day.  Hmmm...wonder if I should switch all that up to just make sure he has that amount (x 4) over a 4 day period.  Guess I'll make that determination after I weigh him.

I'm finding the hardest part is making sure I log in how much I feed him .  If I don't do it before I set the bowl down, then I can't remember how much it was .

Oh, and BTW,  LOVE that smiley with the tape measure.  Too Cute

Oh Sally, just lots of vibes this helps your Darko too! !!!!!!

I'm hijacking this thread to say that it's been approx one month since I started Darko on various amounts of food during the day to try to jump start his metabolism, AND also added Primal Turkey to his diet, which is slightly lower in calories than his beloved Primal Beef/Salmon and darn it all, he's still gaining weight.    Poor guy, as it is, he's only getting 1.5% of his total body weight in food, and he's up .2 lb from a month ago.  I thought sure this would do the trick. 

I feel so bad for him, because before bedtime I do give them all a couple of little treats, sometimes S & Cs (the cat size broken up into smaller sizes), or Purebites chicken pieces, but Callie and Stinkpot get bigger pieces, and more, and poor Darko only gets about 2 pieces, and they are so small he can barely find them when I toss them down the hall to make him run for them.  (that's when I try to sneak the others more pieces)  Plus Tinky loves to play ''chase'' so much that half the time he beats Darko to what I have tossed, and Darko doesn't even get his teeny, tiny treat

The only hope I have that maybe he could lose weight this way is that we were out of town for 6 days, and our catsitter told me she used Wholelife Chicken "liberally" as a topper.  Maybe she added lots of calories in toppers this way .  For Darko, I try to use just a light dusting, and I have to do this to get him to eat it now that I've added the turkey, since he really doesn't like it much yet.



Oh, I've even started giving him more ounces in one day then another, then making up for it along the way, but nothing drastic.  Maybe I need to be MORE drastic in that approach?  And guess I need to get some Krill Oil, but what if he doesn't like it?  He doesn't like the Egg Yolk Lechithin.  Funny that he's kind of picky for a piglet!   So...what kind of Krill Oil it is that I should get?  (and where?) (and how much do I give?)  Is it good for all of them....I'm guessing it is, but if so, does it only help with weight loss if they are overweight?

Sally - WHERE ARE YOU????????????????? And how are the kitties? How are YOU?

*********************************

We took Billy for his weigh-in, FINALLY.

He weighs 13 pounds, 13 ounces!

So his rate of loss has slowed - it was 6 weeks since he was last weighed. And last time, he weighed 14 pounds, 6 ounces (even though I had them record it as 14 pounds 9 ounces - that was his first weight, but he was wiggling around. We subsequently weighed 14 pounds, 6 ounces twice).

SO.... from 15 pounds, 5 ounces, the first five weeks, he lost 15 ounces.
The second six weeks, he lost 9 ounces.

Either the krill oil had no impact on the rate of loss - or it helped him continue to lose more weight than he would have without it - or it added calories, and slowed the rate of loss. There will be no way to know. :dk:

But I'm happy!!! The meal-amount switch up diet, that mschauer calls "feast or famine diet" (FFD), is working for Billy when nothing else was, because we could no longer reduce calories.

At this point... I doubt I'll take him for further weigh-ins. I'm confident he won't gain the weight back - the amount of calories he burns should go up as he converts this fat to muscle, and I know how much to feed him. I am going to continue the meal amount switch-up, to keep his metabolism "up." Even though we didn't actually have a vet appointment, Dr. Summers took a look at him and said he looks and feels great. Yes - too much fat still, and there's probably ideally an 11 pound cat in there. But his body composition has changed a LOT - so some of what we're seeing is the gain in muscle (which weighs more than fat). And now he's only about 20% overweight - not technically obese at 41% overweight. Of course it'll be healthier for him if we can actually get him down to 11 pounds or so, but we've already greatly reduced his risk for obesity-related problems.