# Best food for very overweight cat??



## jpimaging817 (Feb 11, 2012)

I have a 4 year old 25 pound cat that is extremely lazy. I would love to hear some opinions as to what the best food is for him. Currently he gets about 2 - 3 cups a day of dry food (no brand in particular just what ever I think he may like when I see it).

He needs to loose weight but I dont want him to starve either and honestly I dont know if what I am giving him is too much or what

Any advice is greatly appreciated.


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## MowMow (Nov 6, 2010)

2-3 CUPS a day of dry a day? If I fed that much I think my cat would explode. In fact, I I seem to remember that being about how much I fed my 120lb Alaskan Malamute....

You want to take the weight off slowly. If kitty drops too much too fast she can have issues with Feline Hepatic Lipidosis.

If it were mine I would start working on switching kitty over to some high quality grain free canned food and get rid of that kibble completely. I think that alone will start the pounds dropping off.


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## marie73 (Jul 12, 2006)

Charlee wants to move to Texas. She gets a tablespoon of dry as a treat. Sometimes.


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## BotanyBlack (Apr 6, 2011)

2-3 cups.. both my dogs get that much combined in a day.. does he actually eat that much or is that what is put down and tossed later? 

I second a transition to a wet diet. and toss the kibble the carbs in the kibble sure won't help him lose weight. I think you may want to start with set mealtimes if you don't already have them and stop the grazing, then start on the wet food. If you can get him on the wet food you will likely see a increase in his energy level (I saw the other post).

you also may want to check a vet just to make sure he doesn't have a med issue and to monitor his weight lost. As MowMow said its best to go slow.


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## laurief (Jun 22, 2008)

One of my cats weighed 26.45 lbs or thereabouts for most of his adult life. Most of my other cats were overweight, as well - anywhere from slightly pudgy to morbidly obese. It was my fault for free-feeding kibble. When I finally got serious about taking the extra weight off of my cats nearly five years ago, the first thing I did was purchase a digital baby scale, start weighing them every two weeks, and charting their weights so that I could monitor their weight loss/gain. I still weigh the cats and adjust their food portions, as necessary, every two weeks.

The next thing I did was eliminate the all-day kitty buffet and start feeding scheduled, portioned meals. I started with three meals a day, then eliminated the midday meal a week or two later.

Then I upgraded the kibble quality to low-carb EVO and added a canned meal (kibble a.m., canned p.m.). I started with 2/3 of the food amounts recommended on the packaging (I already knew that the feeding guidelines printed on commercial cat foods were almost always grossly exaggerated). After the first two weeks, my cats were still gaining weight, so I reduced the kibble food portions a little. Over the next two weeks, most of the cats' weights held steady, so I reduced the kibble portions a little more. After the next two weeks, they had finally started to lose a little weight. From then on, I adjusted food portions after every weigh-in to maintain a two-week weight loss for each overweight cat of between .2-.4 lbs. If a cat lost less than .2 lbs in 2 weeks, I reduced the food portions a little. If a cat lost more than .4 lbs in 2 weeks, I increased food portions a little. At that rate, the cats lost weight at a safe and steady pace (rapid weight loss may trigger a potentially fatal liver disease in cats). It took me about 18 mos to get all of my fat cats down to their ideal weights.

Canned food is healthier for cats than kibble, so I agree with everyone else's recommendation that you switch to canned, or at least make it the larger part of your cat's diet (assuming your cat will eat canned food). Just to give you an idea of where your cat's food portions should be heading, by the time my fat cats started to lose weight steadily, they were receiving 1/8 c of EVO kibble for breakfast, and 2-4.5 oz of canned food at night.

Those 2-3 c. of kibble that you're currently feeding your cat is less than I was feeding all three of my dogs combined (about 120 lbs of dogs combined) back when I was still feeding them kibble. That's a mind-boggling amount of food to be feeding any cat smaller than a mountain lion. That's why you've been receiving the responses you've gotten on this thread so far. I think several of us are still trying to pop our eyes back into our heads! LOL!

I know that it sounds like we're recommending starving your poor cat to death, but that's really not the case. Slow and steady weight loss is the way to go, but that won't happen until you start weighing your cat regularly and learning how much (or rather, how little) food his body actually needs to maintain itself.

Laurie


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

If you look at the feeding instructions for Meow Mix it says that a 10-14 lb cat should eat 1-1.5 cups per day. Make that a 25 lb cat and it's easy to see that he would have to eat well over 2 cups per day. Pro Plan (with better, but not great ingredients) calls for 2/3 - 1 cup. EVO is 1/2 - 5/8 cup. You can see the progression...the better the food, the less they need to eat to support the same sized cat. 

The reason for this is that the bioavailability of the ingredients (corn, byproducts, corn gluten meal etc.) in Meow Mix is very low (bioavailability is the extent to which a nutrient can be used by the body). Only about 40% of those ingredients are usable by a cat's body. On the other hand, the high quality muscle meat in foods like EVO have a bioavailability of 70-80%. So a cat eating low quality food needs to eat twice as much to get the nutrients it needs. The excess food that gets eaten is turned into fat.

So getting on a high quality food is the first step and then following a regimen like Laurie suggested is the way to go.


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## jpimaging817 (Feb 11, 2012)

okay switching him over to wet food sounds like a plan, which is the best one out there? EVO? I have never heard of it where can I get it? 

Also the wifey says we only feed him 2 cups a day and he doesnt eat it all every time......


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## CJinCA (Dec 5, 2011)

EVO is made by Innova. If you can't find it at your local petstore you can order it from several online sources. petfooddirect, petflow, wag, and probably some others. There was a thread recently on good online sources for cat food.

Other good ones are Nature's Variety Instinct, Merrick's & Merrick's Before Grain, Wellness, Natural Balance, Waruva (my cats don't like the texture though). You probably should try a variety and see what he likes. There are other good brands too that I didn't list. You need to check the ingredient labels and look for ones with a meat as the first ingredient, and no fillers like rice or grains. Some veggies are probably ok. Look at the nutrition analysis for a crude protein % around 9% or better. EVO is 95% meat and my kitties like all of flavors except the Chicken and Turkey flavor. I did have some problems with getting it from petfooddirect as they had some kind of warehouse problem and kept sending EVO dog food instead of cat food.


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## jpimaging817 (Feb 11, 2012)

Sounds like I will be making the rounds to local pet stores, I found some meow mix wet food for now, I know its not the best but its got to be better than the dry stuff...


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## CindyG (Jul 5, 2011)

Yeah, that's a lot of food for one cat! I feed my golden 2 cups per day!
Now, the cat gets Felidae, four tablespoons per day and 2 1/2 ounces of Before Grain canned food. I have to spread her food out over a whole day or she will eat it all at once and then vomit!
She is 7 years old and weighs 11.5 pounds. LAZY!! Oh yeah! She will only play about 5 minutes most!


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