Feeding her 1/2 of recommended and she's still overweight

Crystal Jr. is 4 years old and has been slowly gaining more and more weight since she's been an adult. She's just under fifteen pounds now.

I was feeding her a lot more but I've scaled back in the past year and a half or so, first going to 2/3 cup of dry food a day, then going to 2/3 cup of Hill's Prescription Diet Metabolic/day and now down to 1/2 cup of Hill's Prescription Diet. I also used to leave a big bowl of food for her if I'd go away overnight or for the weekend, and when I'd get back her belly was fat (she eats and eats and eats), so I got a kitty sitter to feed her her specific 1/2 cup per day.

The doc told me to give her 210 calories/day for her to start losing weight. But 1/2 cup of Hill's Prescription Diet is only 144 calories/day, so I'm already way under. 1/2 cup /day is what the bag of food recommends for an 8 lb cat trying to lose weight.

She is always trying to get into the cabinet with her food, crying for it. The only other time she cries like that is when I take her in the car. It makes me think I'm starving her, and maybe there's something else wrong with her. I'm not sure what to do? Or if 1/2 cup a day is starving her?

Have you tried feeding her an all wet diet?   That's what I would do, especially for a cat I want to lose weight.      Wet is much much healthier and dry food is much higher in carbs, calories than wet food. 

@sfgirl -- hi and welcome to TCS!

your concern that your girl may not be getting enough calories per day (at 144 calories/day) is something i'd definitely discuss with your vet. if cats lose weight too quickly they are at risk for hepatic lipidosis (aka, fatty liver disease), which is very serious and can be life threatening. my concern is that while your girl doesn't seem to be losing weight, maybe her body is moving stores of fat to her liver to use. cats livers are not able to process fat efficiently, which results in a fatty and low functioning liver. the fat accumulates in the liver and will cause very serious illness.

something that might be considered also is that maybe your girl simply has a body type to be heavier, or as i've heard said was just born with the genes to be a "fatty" (i'm certainly not intending to insult here). this isn't something that diet can necessarily fix in some cases. if this is the case for your girl, then i'd make sure to serve her a very healthy diet. i'm going to request the input of a member whose cat simply has this body type. @catwoman707 -- may i request your experience for the OP (original poster)?

I'd have to say that yes, you could be starving her (not intentionally of course!), both in the present restricted regime, AND in the 'overfeeding' regime.  

There is such a thing as the hungry fat cat, where the cat is overweight, and desperately poor on nutrition, so they are actually starving.  This occurs when the wrong 'food' is fed, aka kibble.  This is 'food' that is not appropriate for a cat's nutritional requirements, 'food' that can't be broken down and usefully used by their body so instead is stored as fat while the nutritional requirements are not being met.  So even if you feed large amounts, they are still 'starving' - it's part of the reason why cats fed kibble are just crazy for kibble (the other part is because it is sprayed with a digest that is oh so tasty to get them to eat the stuff that wouldn't naturally compute as food to a cat).

SO the answer to both your present dilemma of how much to feed to get her to lose weight (safely) AND the answer to stop her crying AND the answer for a longer healthier life is conveniently easy.  It comes down to WHAT you feed, rather than how much.  On a fully appropriate diet for a cat carnivore, I think it is probably impossible for them to become overweight (think about it; if you were ONLY feed clean healthy human food, it's pretty hard to over-eat and get fat because it fills you up!  Humans get fat because we eat what is rubbish for a human body; cats get fat because they get fed what is rubbish to a cat body).  Even if you don't go for a totally appropriate diet - a prey based diet (I don't; I can't bear to feed live or dead prey!) - you can get closer to that than kibble, which is the worst (irrespective of the fancy brand and price).  You could try balanced raw (great), or canned/wet food (good).

I would switch her food as the priority and not even worry about her weight.  This will stabilise once she's on the right stuff, over time, say 6 months.  AND you will reassure and satisfy her mentally and emotionally, which is really important; if she wants food, she gets food (the right stuff!).  It will probably take a little time to transition off the kibble as it is so addictive to cats with that digest spay.  I did my boy cold turkey, because he already had a mixed diet in any case - so once you get her eating the wet stuff, just take away the kibble.  And I mean get it out of the house, as that spray can be smelt by cats THROUGH CUPBOARDS!  (It's not called kitty crack for nothing!).

Here's some reading for you to get the low-down on what's good food for a cat, written by a vet: http://www.catinfo.org/

This is SO helpful - thank you!  I will read that post and go out and get her new food TONIGHT.  Hoping this works, and feeling really bad for starving my kitty. Poor girl. Thank god for cat forums and YOU GUYS!

I totally agree with all tammyp's reasoning and recommendations.

And wanted to add a few things. First, our previous cat, who was the size of yours at her peak, lost no weight whatsoever on diet kibble (Iams and Purina, both of which the vets recommended) over the years; they're just too carby. Second, like tammyp mentions, there are lots of ways to feed raw foods: I also couldn't bear to feed a prey-based diet but we feed our cats a combo of commercial raw and canned foods, and that works great for everybody. And third, the catinfo.org site is where I started learning about feline nutrition, too, and it's a great resource that I wish I'd known about in time to really help our previous cat. Dr. Pierson's chart of cat food information is fantastic.

Good luck and do ask if you have questions about foods!

Hi, yes, as @mickNsnicks2mom  says, I have a chubby cat Krissy, who is now nearly 13 years old, and has been overweight all of her life, despite the many diet foods, including the Hills metabolic.

Her vet has recently stated that there ARE cats who simply have the genetics to be fat, period. That keeping her from gaining more is the primary focus now, just basically accept it, she is short legged, stocky, and although I would love to slim her down even more by at least a few pounds, it's highly unlikely.

She has been on weight control Iams dry for years, since she was 1 1/2 yrs old, NO help at all. I tried portion control, and found she doesn't eat all that much!

Several things, I do know when I switched her (painfully as she loves dry!) gradually to an all canned diet she did lose a bit, but now she has IBD so she is back to getting dry again, but with canned for morning and dinner too.

When she was on the Hills metabolic, I remember she seemed always hungry, that 2/3 cup of very puffed dry was not satisfying to her at all, I felt like I was starving her.

1/2 cup is nowhere near enough for them.

You want to see a very slow but progressive weight loss, not measured by pounds but in very small, slow increments.

My suggestion after so many years of this diet and that diet, worrying so much that I was killing her by allowing her to be overweight, is to limit a great quality dry food, and adding canned. Krissy gets fancy feast classics as they are grain free. The canned is so much more satisfying. You must start though with timed meals rather than free feeding.

Let her eat what she wants to until she walks away, then pick it up.

If she comes back later for more, put it down again, but pick it up when she's done.

Even if it means doing this 8 times a day at first.

Then start holding out for a bit before giving it to her, meaning 7 times a day, then 6, until you get her down to 4. Someday maybe 3 but 4 for the time being.

Then get her over to 2 of her meals being canned.

Put her wet food down in the am, hold out on the dry to get her eating the canned. Then later when she comes for food, allow her a small amt of dry. For dinner give her the other half of the can, assuming it's a small can like ff is. 3.0 oz.

The 4th meal isn't really a meal, but a few pieces of dry before bed.

Free fed dry addicts do tend to be overweight, but making this switch will get her weight down more than starving her out on Hills.

Krissy weighed 2 1/2 lbs more than she does now. I've accepted this, it works for her and other than this IBD she has now, is in great health, no arthritis, very clean young teeth, good blood tests, and so on.