Affording your pet a healthy lifestyle
The first step in helping your pet lose weight is to stop free-feeding. Giving your pet unlimited access to food is one of the worst things you can do for their health. Pets should be fed small, regular meals, 2 to 4 times per day. Frequently feeding smaller meals allows your pet to feel fuller without overfeeding and enables the body to burn off the meals more easily, concentrating on burning fewer calories at a time (rather than trying to burn off one giant meal). Also, avoid feeding your pet table scraps; human food is high in calories and fat. Finally, try to increase physical activity. Simply adding just 30 minutes of exercise per day can help your pet lose weight. For cats, consider switching to a canned or medicated food. Most dry foods are high in carbohydrates which can cause weight gain. Wet food and medicated dry food have fewer carbohydrates and can help with weight loss.
If your pet needs the support of our veterinary or nutritional staff, we can recommend a specialized diet and exercise plan for them, building a custom plan that will help them lose weight and maintain the weight loss. Veterinary support is especially helpful for pets that are experiencing weight gain caused by an illness such as a thyroid problem. In these instances, medication can be prescribed that will suppress the appetite and help stop fat absorption.