Gaining Too Much Weight On Raw

[Ardina]

I'd posted a while ago when I first started transitioning my cats to raw about my concerns regarding how much my cat Saipha was eating. I realized that she liked the raw so much that she would happily eat 8+ oz of raw each day. After a few weeks, that tapered off to 6-6.5 oz. I started weighing her to make sure she wasn't gaining too much.

Before I started feeding raw (she was on 9 oz of classic/pate Fancy Feast and Friskies), she was 11 lbs 10 oz. According to the vet, she wasn't overweight, but shouldn't gain any more weight. She was good about self-regulating and would occasionally leave some part of her canned food.

After the first 3 weeks of eating 8+ oz of raw, she went up to 11 lbs 15 oz. During this time, she ate voraciously and would lick her bowl clean.

I started measuring out how much I was feeding her and cut her daily portion down to 5.5 oz. In a week, she lost 3 oz and ended at 11 lbs 11 oz.

In the next two weeks, I got a kitten and stopped portion-controlling Saipha's food as it got hard to keep them from eating from each other's bowls. She jumped up to 12 lbs 2 oz.

I started supervising mealtimes and making sure Saipha only got 5.5 oz. In a week, she dropped to 12 lbs 0 oz.

Today (1 week from the last measurement), she only dropped 1 oz to 11 lbs 15 oz. That might be because I got a fattier mutton mix to help my skinny kitten put on some weight and forgot to decrease the amount I gave Saipha.

I want to stick with raw because I believe it's a lot healthier than commercial food, but I never had to watch Saipha's weight when she was on canned food! She's clearly grumpy about being limited to 5.5 oz, and I have to watch her and the kitten like a hawk during mealtimes to make sure they don't steal each other's food. Saipha has a bit of a waist tuck now when looking at her from above, but I know from experience that that waist will quickly disappear if I don't strictly portion control her. And she's not a big-framed enough cat for her to be over 12 lbs. Is there a better way of doing this? Why is she not feeling satiated on raw when she was doing fine on canned?

 

[maureen brad]

I am certainly not an expert but, maybe bugging you to feed her is like a game to her. Unless the food is in some way lacking balance she is not starving. Because raw is such pure food she should not be eating as much of it as she would kibble or canned. . I honestly think that feeding raw we do have to portion control. Is she active and having lots of play time? Extra activity does help...Sorry I am not much help. There just isn't a way to change the fact that to much food results in weight gain.I hope someone pops in who perhaps has been thru this and can give advice.

 

[lalagimp]

if you know what you have to to do, you have to stick with it. My boys hate dieting, and with this raw diet I've been fluctuating their portions from 4 oz up to 6 oz and back and forth. When they need to lose I try to lower it by a half ounce and check in two weeks how it is and then maybe it needs another half ounce. It's getting the right calorie balance, plus their metabolism seems to be able to handle more food doing the homemade raw than any other diet I've tried. Just aim for 1/4-1/2 lbs weight loss per month MAX. You want to do it slowly. Some cats can free feed to their hearts' content, but I can't let my boys do that.

 

[orange&white]

I have to feed my almost 9-month old kitten in the bathroom because she tends to graze, while my cat-on-a-diet eats in the kitchen and inhales his food (and would no doubt be happy to finish the kitten's food too). Without the expense of timed, chipped feeders, I don't have a better idea than separating them. Maybe cutting a "feeding box" with a door that is small enough for the kitten, but too small for my fat cat to squeeze through.

Tangent went from 16.5 pounds to 14 pounds between September and January when I took away the kibble and went canned-only. (He also had big stinky formed-but-soft poops, so I'm not sure how much nutrition actually stayed inside him.)

In January, I changed from canned to raw and he quickly bounced up to around 15.25 and 15.5 pounds. I know my mixes tend to be fatty, but have been trial and error on how much (little) he can eat to get back on track. Like lalagimp said, I've had to cut 1/2 ounce every week or two (from 6 ounces in January to 4 ounces now).

This week, I am trying intermittent volumes of food. Instead of weighing 4 ounces per day every day, I fed him 3 ounces Sun-Tues, 5 ounces Wed-today, and tomorrow he'll get 4 ounces. So at the end of 7 days, he will have averaged 4 ounces. I decided to try the intermittent approach after reading this article: Research Shows Effective Ways to Put Cats on Diets for Weight Loss | petMD

This week, I also picked up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts to add to his food so that hopefully he can eat more volume with the same or lower calories. I hate to do it, but it looks like I may end up having to make two recipes of cat food to feed two cats: one low-fat and one regular. I've already made some special low-cal "turkey muffins" for Tangent which he eats a couple meals per week.

 

[1 bruce 1]

I'd posted a while ago when I first started transitioning my cats to raw about my concerns regarding how much my cat Saipha was eating. I realized that she liked the raw so much that she would happily eat 8+ oz of raw each day. After a few weeks, that tapered off to 6-6.5 oz. I started weighing her to make sure she wasn't gaining too much.

Before I started feeding raw (she was on 9 oz of classic/pate Fancy Feast and Friskies), she was 11 lbs 10 oz. According to the vet, she wasn't overweight, but shouldn't gain any more weight. She was good about self-regulating and would occasionally leave some part of her canned food.

After the first 3 weeks of eating 8+ oz of raw, she went up to 11 lbs 15 oz. During this time, she ate voraciously and would lick her bowl clean.

I started measuring out how much I was feeding her and cut her daily portion down to 5.5 oz. In a week, she lost 3 oz and ended at 11 lbs 11 oz.

In the next two weeks, I got a kitten and stopped portion-controlling Saipha's food as it got hard to keep them from eating from each other's bowls. She jumped up to 12 lbs 2 oz.

I started supervising mealtimes and making sure Saipha only got 5.5 oz. In a week, she dropped to 12 lbs 0 oz.

Today (1 week from the last measurement), she only dropped 1 oz to 11 lbs 15 oz. That might be because I got a fattier mutton mix to help my skinny kitten put on some weight and forgot to decrease the amount I gave Saipha.

I want to stick with raw because I believe it's a lot healthier than commercial food, but I never had to watch Saipha's weight when she was on canned food! She's clearly grumpy about being limited to 5.5 oz, and I have to watch her and the kitten like a hawk during mealtimes to make sure they don't steal each other's food. Saipha has a bit of a waist tuck now when looking at her from above, but I know from experience that that waist will quickly disappear if I don't strictly portion control her. And she's not a big-framed enough cat for her to be over 12 lbs. Is there a better way of doing this? Why is she not feeling satiated on raw when she was doing fine on canned?

I'm assuming she's had a good vet check to rule out any potential health problems causing this. With that said...how does she look compared to how she looked before? I'm wondering if it's possible she's replaced some fat with muscle, or is in the process of doing so. Are you feeding grinds or whole chunks? (It's been the experience at our house that ground food disappears quickly, and non-ground does not, and when fed ground everyone acts as though they're still hungry or not satisfied. Even feeding mostly ground with one or two "chewy" things can help ours, but YMMV!)

 

[lisamarie12]

I would try to incorporate leaner meats if possible, e.g., venison, rabbit and quail.

 

[Ardina]

Thank you all for the tips everyone!

I am certainly not an expert but, maybe bugging you to feed her is like a game to her. Unless the food is in some way lacking balance she is not starving. Because raw is such pure food she should not be eating as much of it as she would kibble or canned. . I honestly think that feeding raw we do have to portion control. Is she active and having lots of play time? Extra activity does help...Sorry I am not much help. There just isn't a way to change the fact that to much food results in weight gain.I hope someone pops in who perhaps has been thru this and can give advice.

She doesn't tend to bug me for food so much as keep trying to eat the kitten's leftover food. She'll also keep checking the meal-feeding area in the hopes that I forgot to pick up any extra food. In terms of activity, it's hard to tell - she plays with the kitten more, so she's active in that sense. But she doesn't get as much interactive play time with a wand toy, since the kitten tends to take over playtime. I've been trying to separate them so Saipha gets some wand toy time.

if you know what you have to to do, you have to stick with it. My boys hate dieting, and with this raw diet I've been fluctuating their portions from 4 oz up to 6 oz and back and forth. When they need to lose I try to lower it by a half ounce and check in two weeks how it is and then maybe it needs another half ounce. It's getting the right calorie balance, plus their metabolism seems to be able to handle more food doing the homemade raw than any other diet I've tried. Just aim for 1/4-1/2 lbs weight loss per month MAX. You want to do it slowly. Some cats can free feed to their hearts' content, but I can't let my boys do that.

I guess I'm just frustrated that I didn't have to watch every ounce when she was on canned, but now that she's on raw, I have to worry about it. I guess it's somewhat of a good thing - I knew she never liked canned food much so she would only eat as much as hunger would drive her to. But she likes the raw so much that she will eat more than she needs to.

I have to feed my almost 9-month old kitten in the bathroom because she tends to graze, while my cat-on-a-diet eats in the kitchen and inhales his food (and would no doubt be happy to finish the kitten's food too). Without the expense of timed, chipped feeders, I don't have a better idea than separating them. Maybe cutting a "feeding box" with a door that is small enough for the kitten, but too small for my fat cat to squeeze through.

Tangent went from 16.5 pounds to 14 pounds between September and January when I took away the kibble and went canned-only. (He also had big stinky formed-but-soft poops, so I'm not sure how much nutrition actually stayed inside him.)

In January, I changed from canned to raw and he quickly bounced up to around 15.25 and 15.5 pounds. I know my mixes tend to be fatty, but have been trial and error on how much (little) he can eat to get back on track. Like lalagimp said, I've had to cut 1/2 ounce every week or two (from 6 ounces in January to 4 ounces now).

This week, I am trying intermittent volumes of food. Instead of weighing 4 ounces per day every day, I fed him 3 ounces Sun-Tues, 5 ounces Wed-today, and tomorrow he'll get 4 ounces. So at the end of 7 days, he will have averaged 4 ounces. I decided to try the intermittent approach after reading this article: Research Shows Effective Ways to Put Cats on Diets for Weight Loss | petMD

This week, I also picked up some boneless, skinless chicken breasts to add to his food so that hopefully he can eat more volume with the same or lower calories. I hate to do it, but it looks like I may end up having to make two recipes of cat food to feed two cats: one low-fat and one regular. I've already made some special low-cal "turkey muffins" for Tangent which he eats a couple meals per week.

I think I'll eventually feed them in separate rooms, especially because I want to feed more than 3 meals to my kitten when I can, but keep Saipha to 3 meals so each meal can be a decent amount that will fill her stomach. That's not possible at the moment, but I will be moving apartments in a week or so, which will make that easier. Let me know how the intermittent feeding goes!

 

[Ardina]

I'm assuming she's had a good vet check to rule out any potential health problems causing this. With that said...how does she look compared to how she looked before? I'm wondering if it's possible she's replaced some fat with muscle, or is in the process of doing so. Are you feeding grinds or whole chunks? (It's been the experience at our house that ground food disappears quickly, and non-ground does not, and when fed ground everyone acts as though they're still hungry or not satisfied. Even feeding mostly ground with one or two "chewy" things can help ours, but YMMV!)

She had a checkup in November, and the vet said she was perfectly healthy. I've been seeing the weight gain only since she transitioned from canned to raw (not that I've told my vet about feeding raw - I'd probably get a lecture on how Hill's Science is better). She's only 2, so I can't think of what medical conditions at her age would be causing the weight gain.

Saipha's always been very muscular and deceptively dense for her size. Since she was eating so much in the beginning of the transition, I was weighing her often and so I caught the weight gain early. Thus, I saw an increase in only about half a pound before I started portion controlling. With only half a pound, it's hard to tell whether it's fat to muscle conversion or just fat. Now that you mention it, I'm wondering if maybe I should feed her as much as she wants and see if she will stabilize at a higher weight (as a result of more muscle rather than fat). I'm just a little hesitant to do so because I know how quickly she will gain and how slow of a process it is to lose weight. I started out with ground, but I've been slowly making it chunkier with each mix by adding hearts, gizzards, and lately boneless chicken/turkey thigh chunks. I think you're right that she tends to feel fuller with chunks rather than ground.

I would try to incorporate leaner meats if possible, e.g., venison, rabbit and quail.

After that one week in which she didn't lose much weight because I fed her some mutton, I've been giving her only rabbit, chicken, and turkey and saving the fattier mutton, beef, and duck for the kitten who needs to put on weight. Saipha doesn't like the red meats much anyway, so that isn't a problem.

 

[orange&white]

With only half a pound, it's hard to tell whether it's fat to muscle conversion or just fat. Now that you mention it, I'm wondering if maybe I should feed her as much as she wants and see if she will stabilize at a higher weight (as a result of more muscle rather than fat). I'm just a little hesitant to do so because I know how quickly she will gain and how slow of a process it is to lose weight.

How old is she? The first time I fed raw, Tangent was almost 4 years old and ate all the raw food he wanted for 5 years. He was a very healthy, muscular cat in his prime. If Saipha is a young-to-middle-aged cat, she very well may be gaining muscle. Raw offers so much better bioavailability than processed foods.

Even now with Tangent definitely overweight at almost 13 years, his body shape has changed for the better since he went back onto raw 6 months ago. He has a waist and nice tummy tuck he didn't have before switching back to raw. His huge primordial pouch is almost empty skin instead of full of fat. Most of his excess weight now appears to be around his rib cage. Plus he has more energy and at least walks around a lot more whereas he had gotten to where he would just lie around his food bowl like a slug most of the time. He was never a terribly active cat even as a kitten.

 

[Ardina]

How old is she? The first time I fed raw, Tangent was almost 4 years old and ate all the raw food he wanted for 5 years. He was a very healthy, muscular cat in his prime. If Saipha is a young-to-middle-aged cat, she very well may be gaining muscle. Raw offers so much better bioavailability than processed foods.

Even now with Tangent definitely overweight at almost 13 years, his body shape has changed for the better since he went back onto raw 6 months ago. He has a waist and nice tummy tuck he didn't have before switching back to raw. His huge primordial pouch is almost empty skin instead of full of fat. Most of his excess weight now appears to be around his rib cage. Plus he has more energy and at least walks around a lot more whereas he had gotten to where he would just lie around his food bowl like a slug most of the time. He was never a terribly active cat even as a kitten.

She's 2 years old, so maybe I am overreacting and should let her eat as much as she wants. I should have realized that muscle is denser than fat and that might be why she was gaining weight. She's a pretty average framed cat, not too petite nor too large, so I always figured that anything over 12 lbs would make her overweight. But that won't be true if those pounds are in the form of muscle rather than fat.

Really, I should be looking at her body condition, but it's so hard to tell. I can feel her ribs with some padding at times, but if she curls up or sits in the meatloaf position, then there's a lot of padding and I can't feel her ribs easily. She has a little bit of waist tuck when seen from above, so she may be okay based on that. Agghh, I have no idea anymore.

 

[orange&white]

She's 2 years old, so maybe I am overreacting and should let her eat as much as she wants. I should have realized that muscle is denser than fat and that might be why she was gaining weight. She's a pretty average framed cat, not too petite nor too large, so I always figured that anything over 12 lbs would make her overweight. But that won't be true if those pounds are in the form of muscle rather than fat.

Really, I should be looking at her body condition, but it's so hard to tell. I can feel her ribs with some padding at times, but if she curls up or sits in the meatloaf position, then there's a lot of padding and I can't feel her ribs easily. She has a little bit of waist tuck when seen from above, so she may be okay based on that. Agghh, I have no idea anymore.

Sounds like she is built like my kitten who looks in great shape at 9 months but sometimes seems "squishy" or "too padded" compared to other cats I've owned in the past.

 

[Ardina]

Sounds like she is built like my kitten who looks in great shape at 9 months but sometimes seems "squishy" or "too padded" compared to other cats I've owned in the past.

One of my nicknames for Saipha is Squish for that very reason.

 

[sarah430]

Sounds a lot like my Navi. She (and brother Link) are 11-ish months old and she loooooves the raw. She gobbles it up. Link likes it too but he is much more of a natural grazer. When I took them in to the vet when they were about 7 months old they both weighed 7.3 lbs. I don't have a scale but I can tell by holding each and by sight that Navi is heavier. But I think she's still in the normal range. Her body type is definitely different than his too. He's very lean and she seem to have a squishy, roly-poly tummy, especially when she's sitting upright. I wonder if that's a girl thing since a lot of my past girl kitties had the roly poly tummy even when normal weight. Plus her head is small so it exaggerates the size of her body.

She isn't aggressive but Link will move as soon as she starts poking her head in his dish so I either need to watch over them until Link is done or separate them.

 

[Ardina]

I think what makes it hard is that Saipha has the loosest skin I've ever felt on a cat. I can literally slide skin overlying her hips 8-10 inches up towards her neck. I guess I'll feed her more and see how much more she gains. I'll give her a one pound margin - she's 12 lbs now, so I'll let her gain up to 13 lbs before I'll assume that her weight won't stabilize and that I'll have to portion control. It would be lovely to only pull out my scale on cat food making days and not every mealtime to weigh out a portion. We'll see how this experiment goes...

 

[Ardina]

So it's been a while since I updated this thread... I got busy and didn't really weigh her for about 4 months while I pretty much let her have as much food as she wanted. And now she's 13 lbs 3 oz. And the waist tuck is starting to disappear.

Back to the portion controlling . I'd so hoped that she could self-regulate as she had on canned food. I think her ideal weight is probably around 11-11.5 lbs. So now this thread will become her weight loss thread as I attempt to get her to lose 2 lbs. Keeping her on 5.5 oz/day seemed to work last time. Is aiming for a 2 oz loss per week okay?

 

[orange&white]

Yes, 2 oz/week is 1/2 pound per month. That's a safe pace.

2-3% of body weight is the average amount of raw food for cats. So between 4 to 6 ounces for a 12 pound cat.

Tangent just dipped below 14 pounds for the first time in a long time. He's only getting 4 ounces of food per day, or he gains weight. He started losing at a steady pace when I moved him to extra-lean cuts of meat.

 

[lalagimp]

I have to keep readjusting my raw feeding. Both guys were getting 5 oz, then one suddenly starts to put on weight on 5 oz and the other starts diving, losing weight on 5 oz. Now, the heavier guy is on 4.5 for now to keep him from getting any larger and I'm sure he'll have to be at 4 to lose anything. The one that lost a bunch of weight had to go to 6.5 oz to get him back to a safe zone and then he's leveled off at 6 oz. I still have to weigh them every week because +/- 2 oz makes a difference on the scale. I took my time getting the weight back on Tom, usually no more than a 2 oz + per week.

 

[Ardina]

Yeah, I might just have to accept that she won't be able to self-regulate. Once she gets back down to 11 lbs, I'll have to figure out what her maintenance amount is so she doesn't regain everything again.

 

[kittyluv387]

8 oz of raw would be a lot for most cats. My cats get fed seperstely...lol.

 

[Ardina]

8 oz of raw would be a lot for most cats. My cats get fed seperstely...lol.

I completely agree - too bad Saipha hasn't read the raw feeding guides!

"I'd rather nap on the keyboard than read!"