Welcome to 2024! We’ve rung in the New Year and made our list of New Year’s resolutions, but what about our pets’? Should we have a few resolutions for them as well? Maybe one extra walk a week, or more time chasing the laser pointer, or finally working on the weight loss goals the veterinarian keeps suggesting!
We all know how challenging it can be to loose weight and stick to a healthy lifestyle. There are endless diets and exercise programs to help motivate us to reach our goals. What about our furry friends? How can we help them reach their ideal weights?
The biggest advantage to helping our pets loose weight, is that we can directly control how many calories they are getting every day. Once you’ve learned how many calories your pet should be eating, we then determine how many calories should be from a balance pet food and how many can be from treats. For most pets, only 10% of their daily calories should be treats. For example, if your pet is consuming 500 calories per day, only 50 calories should be from treats. Ever look at how many calories are in all those tasty treats? Don’t fret if you’ve been a little heavy on the treats! Most pets are more interested in the amount of treats they are getting not the size of the treat. A great tip is to break a treat up into multiple pieces so you are able to give it throughout the day.
For the rest of their daily calories, we are relying on their pet food. If they eat only dry food or only wet food, it is relatively easy to figure out how much they should be getting a day. From our example above, at 500 calories per day, we would be feeding 450 of dry or wet food. If you feed a combination of both wet and dry, we can still determine how much of each to feed, it just takes a little more math. Don’t worry, we are more than happy to do the math for you!
For most pets, weight loss goals are long term. Often times we use a step-weight loss plan breaking down the weight loss goals into stages to avoid too rapid of a weight loss which can cause serious medical conditions. Slowly reducing their calories will help reduce cravings, begging, and late night pestering.
If you’re interested in figuring out how many calories to feed your pet or need help getting started, give us a call or send us an email. We can tailor a plan for your pet making it as easy as possible for you to reach that ultimate goal! Let’s start the year off right for our furry friends!
