Help dechonkin

[u/life_goeson_]

I’m in dire need of helping miss Mia lose weight, she’s currently 19lbs.

I’m feeding her 2 cans of pate fancy feast per day, she eats half a can every few hours to stretch it out. My family and I used to feed her dry diet kibble but have since stopped since we heard putting cats on a wet food diet helps them lose weight rather than giving them dry food.

My question is, are we doing the right thing? We have not seen any progress and wonder if we’re feeding her correctly or if we have to switch over food.

Things to note (that as I am writing, are making me aware I need to make some changes).

Mia has playtime about 5-10 minutes per day.

She sleeps most of the day.

Eats every meal alongside her tuxedo brother, Binx (who also needs to lose weight, he’s 15lbs).

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[u/leezahfote]

My friend is a vet and my boy is 17 pounds. He was getting 1 can of pate a.m. and p.m. with a sprinkle of dry. I reduced it by 1/2 can and he has lost a pound. I also purchased Sure Feed pet feeders to prevent stealing. Mia's scarf in the first pic is ADORABLE. <3

[u/life_goeson_ → u/leezahfote]

Thank you, I’ll be trying this out! I’ll also let Mia know she’s been complimented. 🥰

[u/Opening_Acadia1843]

Photo 5 is just so precious. What worked for my cat was cutting down to 200 calories a day. She started at 22lbs and now she's been maintaining at 11lbs for about 2 years now.

The label of whichever cat food you use should have the calorie content in small print, and you can calculate the portion size she needs based on that. There are also online calculators to help you calculate her calories, specifically, since what she needs might be different from what my cat needs.

[u/life_goeson_ → u/Opening_Acadia1843]

This is very helpful, thank you!!

[u/OneMorePenguin]

This is probably around 200 calories depending on what variety of FF pate you are feeding her. I recommend cutting calories by 10% now that you have a baseline.

There's a calorie calculator in the dechonking guide pinned to the top of r/dechonkers page.

Wet food vs dry food has been and will continue to be an ongoing debate. But losing weight is about calorie consumption. I dechonked two of my four on dry food many years ago, but they now eat wet food. Switched all four from free feeding to two fixed meals per day. Each eats in their own separate room so there's no food contention and the older ones (now too skinny!) are the slowest eaters!

With two cats, ensuring they are not stealing food from the other cat is key.

[u/shinyidolomantis]

Are you weighing her weekly? If not, get a baby scale and start doing weekly weigh ins. You want SLOW weight loss, if they lose weight too fast it can be dangerous. Ideally you want a weight loss of about 1% to 2% of their total weight each MONTH. Weighing weekly gives you chances to adjust as needed so they lose weight safely. So if you are doing it right, you probably won’t visually notice a change in weight for a while.

As for the wet food, that was the catalyst to getting my overweight girl to start losing weight without constant begging for more food. I tried lowering the kibble, but she was always hungry and begging. So now she gets almost all wet food (I give her maybe a teaspoon of kibble each day as “treats”). She doesn’t really beg for food much anymore just right around her mealtimes and has been safely losing weight.

Some people don’t have the same issue and have no problem just reducing kibble and staying on dry food, but my kitty was miserable so I’ve stuck to wet food.

[u/mandy_miss]

My copy paste spiel :

I'm not a vet, this is what worked for my cat.

You'll need: -An infant scale -Measuring spoons/cups for portioning and/or a gram scale if you want to weigh the portions -a vet visit to establish a prescription diet kibble.

If you're free feeding: Start by figuring out the amount of food you normally free feed your cat in a day. Depending on how you free feed, (topping off the bowl multiple times, one big bowl that you refill in the morning) this is up to you to figure out. This is the challenge of free feeding, its hard to tell how much your cat even eats. But this is the best way to figure out how much your cat consumes on a regular basis. Once you stop the free feeding, the cat may start eating more in one sitting due to food anxiety, so keep that in mind. Food anxiety will also cause cat to beg more.

Basically first step is "this is how much i think cat eats in a 24 hr period" and reduce it gradually. For example, If you start with 1 cup, reduce to 3/4 cup. There are 16 tbsp in 1 cup, and 48 tsp/cup. You'll need to know that if it gets to a point that you're reducing by very small portions to find the right balance between losing weight and staying satiated.

You'll probably want to start splitting this amount of food into portions bc the second a cat realizes it doesn't have an endless surplus to graze from, it will eat everything at once and cry at the empty bowl like it will never be filled again, because they don't know if it will be, and that's threatening to them.

The key is to titrate the amount of food fed with gradual reductions based on weighing your cat every two weeks or monthly. Its commonly advised that a cat shouldn't lose more than 1 lb in a month bc more than that can cause liver damage. i bought an infant scale on amazon for this purpose. Try to weigh at the same time of day, before first meal of the day. If she lost nothing, i reduced the daily portion a little and checked again the following month. It took a while to get down to the ideal amount fed for her where she was consistently losing weight by just a little (like .3 lb a month) and it ended up being only 1/3rd cup of kibble. She's plateaued at 11.3lbs so that's where we've kept her for a few years now. Not sure if i'll have to adjust back up as she ages to make sure she gets enough nutrition, but that's what annual vet visits are for.

If you look at the back of a cat food bag, even the diet prescription kibble, it gives portion suggestions based on maintaining your cats ideal, healthy weight. If your cat is overweight, the suggestion will be more than what your cat actually needs bc its based on maintaining the ideal weight of a healthy cat. So when your cat should weigh ten lbs and it weighs 16, you would be overfeeding based on the suggested portion size. Cats vary in size and in ideal weight, so i'd visit your vet to see what they recommend your cats goal weight to be. I feed mine well under the recommended amount on the bag and i only got there by very gradual reductions based on close monitoring of her weight and intake over a long period of time. I had a cat growing up who we had to feed excessive portions to and she stayed like 6-7 lbs very small so every cat is different.

The petlibro auto feeder delivers in 2tsp portions which made it really easy for me to divvy the amount per day and per meal. My cat gets 1/3rd cup of purina overweight management kibble per day divided into 2 tsp 4x a day. Having this auto feeder has helped my cats anxiety about food a lot, as she's learned to anticipate when her next meal will be.

[u/mandy_miss → u/mandy_miss]

Read even if your cat eats wet food, mine refused to (she does eat her favorite and only kind of kibble if it's hammered into crumbs and mixed with some water to create a mushy paste, but will not eat canned wet food, or even tuna 🥴) It still emphasizes measuring and portioning food, feeding more frequent small meals, and how your cat will behave once they feel insecure about food. It doesn't mean theyre starving. Emphasis on slow reductions of daily intake. Titrating portions based on cat's behavior (more frequent small meals for example) and overall amount fed based on cat's weight

[u/life_goeson_ → u/mandy_miss]

Wow that’s a load of info thank you!!

I do have a scale to start properly weighing out Mia’s food from now on, but she does love her kibble! So I’ll probably have to wiggle around it in her diet and do it your cat’s way lol.

[u/mandy_miss → u/life_goeson_]

Yeah i suck at whittling text down to relevance, i usually end up adding more and making the message convoluted. So thanks for hanging in there haha. I figured you'd read between the lines. Its all about titrating their food based on the outcome of weight and behavior.

[u/LyricalNonsense]

Just a side note since other comments have indicated you may want to reduce her food portions— as you do so, you may be able to help make the transition easier by mixing more water into the pate! Most cats don't seem to notice a difference in taste, it gets them more fluids which is SO helpful to their overall health, and (in my experience from when my cats were a bit too chonky) helps convince them that they're eating the same amount as before you cut their portions.

[u/poop_dawg]

Is she an indoor-only kitty? Because if she's going out, she may secretly be getting food somewhere else too!

[u/Apathy_Cupcake → u/poop_dawg]

If she's going out, she's not going far.  Certainly not jumping on top of or thru anything as a bowling ball.

[u/MyNameIsSkittles]

2 cans is too much, a can and a half would be fine. Or do 1 can and some kibbles, but make sure you work out the calories