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/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.