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Losing weight, wet or dry food...
- Thread starter meow66
- Start Date
A lot of people recommend wet because it's inherently lower calorie and lower carb, and I agree. If you compare the calories between wet and dry, and I'll use the ones I've calculated for my cats as an example, a high protein low carb dry food can have around 100-120 calories per ounce whereas wet food can have 28-31 calories per ounce.
Consider how fast each gets eaten as well. A lot of cats will just wolf down dry food because it's very easy to grab, crunch, and swallow. Wet food needs to be lapped, pushed back, and swallowed. The moisture built into the wet food also ensures proper hydration, where many cats won't go out of their way to drink water from a separate source. I always liken it to having a hearty stew vs eating a bag of chips. The chips taste good, sure, but you could eat a whole bag without realizing, and you wouldn't even feel full until you drank some water to add moisture to your stomach. You feel the fullness of the stew as you're eating it and are less likely to overeat.
Dry foods tend to need more starchy things to bind the food into that kibble shape, so even regardless of what they use to bind it, it adds to the carbs, which just like in people, adds to the calories and easier weight gain.
If you use something like this tool, you can find the carb percentage and calorie count of pretty much any food you can find the guaranteed analysis for: http://fnae.org/carbcalorie.html
I popped in some Friskies wet pate and came up with 3% carbs vs Orijen dry to come up with 17%.
There are some "weight loss formulas" that are geared towards overweight cats, but I think they're just a gimmick, whether they're wet or dry. They tend to be lower in fat and calories, but this can be managed more efficiently and more easily by owners who learn to calculate and count calories to meet the specific needs of their cat. If you haven't done so already, bring your cat in for a checkup at the vet and ask what their ideal weight would be.
You can ask the vet about calorie intake as well, but there is a very general formula that floats around from the obesity page on Cat Info that specifies 13.6 * ideal body weight in lbs + 70 = total number of calories/day. If I use my 12.5lb cat as an example, that would work out to be 13.6 * 12.5 + 70 = 240 calories/day. If the wet food I feed is 29 calories/ounce, then he would need 8.28 ounces of wet food each day. If the dry food I feed is 116 calories/ounce, he would get 2.07 ounces of dry food each day.
Another reason I think wet food is easier for weight loss is because if a cat sees 2 ounces of dry food for the entire day, chances are I'll hear lots of whining and crying. Wet food seems more substantial, they can get more of it and feel pretty satiated after each meal.
Consider how fast each gets eaten as well. A lot of cats will just wolf down dry food because it's very easy to grab, crunch, and swallow. Wet food needs to be lapped, pushed back, and swallowed. The moisture built into the wet food also ensures proper hydration, where many cats won't go out of their way to drink water from a separate source. I always liken it to having a hearty stew vs eating a bag of chips. The chips taste good, sure, but you could eat a whole bag without realizing, and you wouldn't even feel full until you drank some water to add moisture to your stomach. You feel the fullness of the stew as you're eating it and are less likely to overeat.
Dry foods tend to need more starchy things to bind the food into that kibble shape, so even regardless of what they use to bind it, it adds to the carbs, which just like in people, adds to the calories and easier weight gain.
If you use something like this tool, you can find the carb percentage and calorie count of pretty much any food you can find the guaranteed analysis for: http://fnae.org/carbcalorie.html
I popped in some Friskies wet pate and came up with 3% carbs vs Orijen dry to come up with 17%.
There are some "weight loss formulas" that are geared towards overweight cats, but I think they're just a gimmick, whether they're wet or dry. They tend to be lower in fat and calories, but this can be managed more efficiently and more easily by owners who learn to calculate and count calories to meet the specific needs of their cat. If you haven't done so already, bring your cat in for a checkup at the vet and ask what their ideal weight would be.
You can ask the vet about calorie intake as well, but there is a very general formula that floats around from the obesity page on Cat Info that specifies 13.6 * ideal body weight in lbs + 70 = total number of calories/day. If I use my 12.5lb cat as an example, that would work out to be 13.6 * 12.5 + 70 = 240 calories/day. If the wet food I feed is 29 calories/ounce, then he would need 8.28 ounces of wet food each day. If the dry food I feed is 116 calories/ounce, he would get 2.07 ounces of dry food each day.
Another reason I think wet food is easier for weight loss is because if a cat sees 2 ounces of dry food for the entire day, chances are I'll hear lots of whining and crying. Wet food seems more substantial, they can get more of it and feel pretty satiated after each meal.
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