How Do I Get My Cat to Lose Weight?

Feline obesity is no joke! As previously discussed, 35% of adult cats are overweight or obese, and that increases to 45% as they get older. Prevention is easier than correction, so even as a kitten and especially at the 1 year old exam, we should be determining a healthy weight plan for your young cat. However, now that your veterinarian has determined your cat is overweight and should lose weight, how exactly do we go about doing it? I know my own cat isn’t willingly cutting back on all those treats she demands! 

While some people think increasing exercise will be helpful, unless your cat is going to the gym and running on the treadmill for 3-6 hours a day, it is not a very feasible solution! While there are cat treadmill wheels (we highly recommend this as a great form of entertainment for young cats), and we do encourage owners play with their cats two to four times a day of 10-20 minutes sessions each for enrichment, exercise alone is not going to help with weight loss as much as we would like it to. 

The easiest way to lose weight is through controlling our calorie intake with a controlled weight loss plan where we slowly decrease calories over a few weeks. Once your veterinarian has calculated your feline friend’s BCS and MER (see previous recent articles), we will discuss slowly decreasing calories to the desired amount. Monthly weigh-ins at home and tracking our progress is helpful to determine if further decrease is indicated. Healthy weight loss is NO MORE than ½ lb PER MONTH. Anything more can be dangerous to your cat’s health. 

To help with satiety and begging, we recommend a few tricks! Switching to wet food, or an over the counter weight management diet, can be helpful as there are less calories per as fed weight, so cats will feel fuller sooner. You can also use different types of feeders to slow down how quickly the food is ingested - such as puzzle feeders, Indoor Hunting Feeders, or automatic feeders that feed smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day.  As for treats, breaking them in half, switching to low calorie versions, or putting them in a puzzle toy so it takes longer can be really helpful. 

For more help with your cat’s weight loss journey, please contact us! We are more than happy to help your cat be the healthiest version it can be.