Strict diet can save the life of an obese pet

It is estimated that more than 30 percent of dogs and cats are obese – not just overweight, but truly obese. That means they are hauling around 30 percent or more of excess fat.

Sandra’s cat Louie weighs 26 pounds. Sandra says Louie should weigh 12 pounds. That’s like a man whose ideal weight is 175 pounds weighing 380 pounds.

Sandra has tried for four months to put Louie on a diet – only to have him gain a pound. I must commend Sandra for trying to address Louie’s weight. Obesity is serious.

Let’s start by addressing the fundamentals of weight loss. Simply put, weight will be lost if the intake of calories is less than the calories needed to maintain current weight. What could be easier? Just feed Louie less than he needs to maintain his weight and he’ll shed the pounds. Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

Every creature is different as to how many calories it burns and how many calories it needs to support its weight. Calorie burning can be increased through exercise, but it can be difficult to force a cat to exercise. Because Louie is not a dog, we will not put exercise into our calorie-burning equation.

Instead, we will come up with a feeding strategy designed for weight loss. I first recommend a thorough physical evaluation and blood testing. This can help rule out possible metabolic problems that might be contributing to the weight problem.

It is also important to identify possible disease processes that may have developed as a result of his obesity. Diabetes and heart disease are possible. Hopefully, Louie has no underlying disease and no secondary disease and we can proceed with restricting his calorie intake.

With hugely overweight patients, I use a special prescription diet with fewer calories per unit of volume, less caloric density, while still maintaining bulk.

It fills the patient’s stomach without the calories of a regular diet. No over-the-counter diets allow this amount of calorie restriction.

We start by figuring Louie will need about 30 calories per pound of body weight per day. This number is an average and, as I mentioned, every cat is different.

We multiple the 30 by his ideal body weight – 12 pounds. So he needs 360 calories per day. Then we must subtract some amount from that number in order to reduce his weight. I would back off from the 360 calories by about 120 calories per day and, knowing that fat has about 3,600 calories in one pound, we can expect a weight-loss rate over time. Back to our calculations, 3,600 divided by 120 gives us a loss of about 1 pound of fat over 30 days. .

Pets may not buy into the whole idea. They will use every trick to get you to feed them more. Stay strong, my friends. What you are doing might save your pet’s life.

Submit questions to Your Pet in care of LifeStyles, The Modesto Bee, P.O. Box 5256, Modesto CA 95352.