Overweight cat

What is the best kind of food to feed an overweight cat? ive been feeeding porkchop wet food everyday now and instead of a porkchop shes starting to look like a meatball haha any advice to help porky lose wait please tell me!!!

You might want to have one of the mods move this to the health and nutrition section....youll get a larger number of replies probably........

you can PM one of them.....

I unfortunetly have no advice to quell the burden of overweight kitties..as i have one myself....

good luck

I don't know if you are open to actual cereal food diets. I'm not sure I understand what you are feeding her now. And I don't know the general concensus of the board.

However, we just had a Hills demonstration at our clinic. They make prescription diets that your vet has to reccomend. They have two of them r/d and w/d. [[Restricted diet, and weight diet.]] Both products have L-Carnatine in them which helps boost the metabolism and helps animals lose weight. In a study it brought a 160lb dog down to 89lbs [[the weight he was supposed to be around]]. They also make it for cats. They have it in a canned form as well.

Another way to help your cat lose weight is to play with it. If your cat likes to chase things, playing for 10 minutes a day does alot.

Im feeding porkchop canned food,(Friskies)

According to my vet, cats are supposed to be fed around 70% dry food and 30% wet food. Maybe it is too much wet food that is the problem. But I'm not sure. At least you have lots to cuddle!

Friskies! Well yeah, that's another good point. Wet food helps them pack on the weight, how many cans are your feeding? I think the label tells you like 2 cans a day or something. You could probably get away with feeding a can and a half. Half a can in the morning, half a can in the afternoon, and half a can at night.

I agree a balanced diet of dry and wet is good as well. Dry food helps keep teeth cleaner than feeding canned.

I would try a food higher in quality than friskies.. and one with l carnitine.. I have one who eats wet/ homade and raw only... and one that is 70% dry 20 wet and about10- raw... quality helps you feed less they get more.. to be nice friskies is like a double cheese burger and fries..

If you look at the friskies label I believe the first ingredient in the canned food is water for processing. Although I could be wrong. I haven't looked at cat food in a while since my high maintanence kitty has to eat IVD Duck and Pea.


sharky - how do you formulate a raw diet? I would be interested in possibley doing something like that for my cat... but don't know much about it. Any info you have would be awesome.

My sister recently had her cat diagnosed as morbidly obese. Her vet recommended cutting out dry food completely (too many carbs) and feeding only wet.

I would talk to your vet about a plan to help your kitty safely loose weight. A higher quality food will be one step.

We keep friskies at the vet hospital where I work to use on the cats that won't eat at all. It's pretty much (this is what my vet's think) like feeding someone chocolate, or popcorn, or fast food. It's fattening and is "kitty junk food".

If you want your cat to lose weight, you'll want to first want to talk to your vet. Odds are they'll switch you to a dry food (it's also better for their teeth) like the Hills Weight Diet and have you feed 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup of food, twice a day. This is how we are trimming down our blood donor cats at work. They get 1/2 cup a day and have gone from personal highs of 23lbs and 25lbs down to 15lbs each.

Originally Posted by Mimosa

You say: "right now I use beef and beef liver" , just to make sure, I hope that's not all you're feeding your cat, it'll get "all meat syndrome". If you truly want to feed a raw diet you need to feed all parts of the prey animal (bones, muscle and organs) You don't have to do this in one day, but just make sure your cats get all parts in about the right proportion over two weeks or so. Also, chicks (like the ones you can buy as snake feed) are whole prey animals in themselves. Some cats don't understand what to do with chicks, but mine think they're great fun and chewing them is good for their teeth ! The cats eat everything, including the feet and the beak. Not for the squamish, I know.

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I am squemish about bone ... I am looking at just getting bone meal at the health food store since I am finding it hard to find a good supplement where I am..

I was under the impression that Wet Food was Better than dry food in terms of weight control. My last cat was on dry food and she became overweight. There has been numerous threads saying wet is better, since dry is loaded with carbs. Some of these threads contradict others that I have read. I am not one for a raw food diet. I have a hard enough time figureing out what to feed my kids, let alone grinding up different raw meats for my cats. Which is better, Wet or Dry? Right now I am feeding Whiska's wet food, and I only give dry if I am out for more than a couple of hours. Is there a wet food that is better than Whiska's that is easily found at most pet stores. Some of these specialty cats foods that have been recomended in previous threads I can only order online, which is not convenient for me. I have 2 kids, and a husband which is like a kid and I also work, so there is very little time to be hunting all over the place for different foods. But I still want my kitty to eat well and be healthy!!!!

Science diet makes several different wet foods. They have even started making "gourmet" ones. Alot of people don't like science diet, but I'm cool with it. It's still the number one reccomended complete diet regardless.

Canned food in moderation is fine, however, alot of people feed their cats several cans. And canned food packs on the weight faster than dry food does.

I have to say I'm not a huge fan of whiskas, I think their first ingredient is also something I'm not interested in, although I haven't bought canned food in a while. [[I think it might be water as well? I can't remember. I can't justify payuing for water.]]

When I was buying it [[for every once in a while]] Fancy Feast isn't so bad, as long as you read the first ingredient on the can, most of them have a solid meat first, some of them do not. Nutro Max might also do a canned food. I have no idea. When buying a canned food, or even dry you can look on the label to see the first ingredients.

I usually stay away from something that has ground corn, or yellow corn, corn meal isn't as big of a deal to me. It's all about the food's protein source. The first 3 things are what the food contains the most of. I also stay from "water used for processing" as the first ingredient because I'm not paying for a can of water. When looking for a good food I want a meat product to be first, NOT meat by products. So saying that the first ingredient is chicken, I'll buy that. Another thing I don't like is that in Meow Mix "Turkey Dinner" tuna is the first ingredient on the label So it's all about reading the back label and deciding what you want your kitty eating.

Two of my cats go to the weight clinic due to being overweight, I was given some r/d for one of them last week, and had to ring my vet nurse to ask about guidelines. My vet went to a conference last week that said that Obesity wet food helps them lose weight more than dry, and that she doesn't like Hills r/d, she thinks it is a bad food. As it wasn't her i was talking to, I don't know why she thinks that. I have read loads of articles that say that dry food helps cats get overweight (obviously us owners have to take responsibility too) due to the amount of carbs.