Maintaining a healthy body weight is one of the most important aspects of long-term pet health. Yet many owners struggle to know whether their pet is at an ideal weight or how to help if extra weight starts to accumulate.
Healthy Weight Does Not Mean Skinny
First of all, we need to establish that a skinny pet does not equate to a healthy pet. There is a difference between a lean pet and a malnourished pet.
A lean pet maintains:
- A healthy amount of muscle
- Stable energy levels
- Good mobility and endurance
- A visible but not extreme body shape
On the other hand a malnutritioned pet may:
- Lose muscle mass
- Appear weak or fragile
- Tire more easily
- Have visible bones and reduced strength
A healthy weight in pets is not solely dictated by the numbers displayed on the scale. Furthermore, your pets need a specific muscle to fat ratio to be considered healthy. Your pets need enough muscle to support movement and joint stability and have enough body fat to provide energy reserves and insulation. Fat itself is not inherently bad. It helps store energy, protect organs, and is vital for certain bodily functions in your pets.
The key to a healthy pet weight is neither excess fat nor excessive thinness. Fat only becomes an issue when excess fat begins to outweigh healthy muscle condition leading to health complications such as obesity (discussed here).
What a Healthy Body Condition Looks Like
To help pets determine what a healthy pet looks like, most veterinarians assess body condition using the 9-point Body Condition Score (BCS), which evaluates body fat based on visible shape and palpable landmarks rather than weight alone. Pet owners may refer to numerous diagrams available online. A healthy pet (generally, though a healthy weight can depend on the breed of the animal), would have:
- Have a visible waistline when viewed from above
- Have ribs that can be felt but not prominently seen
- Move comfortably and willingly
- Maintain consistent energy levels
- Retain good muscle tone
In contrast, overweight pets often carry excess fat around the abdomen and chest and underweight pets may show overly visible ribs, hips, or spine with reduced muscle definition. For more information, the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention provides ample detail and information for even the healthy weight for the breed of your pets.
How Pets Gain Weight
Your pet gaining weight might not even be from overfeeding. It is entirely possible that the portions given to your pets are the ideal amount, yet your pets may be displaying symptoms of being overweight. Pet owners should know that there could be other internal and external factors that influence your pet’s weight:
- Low activity: Your pet is not using the energy gained from its nutrition. This leads to energy being stored as body fat.
- Low-quality food/Poor satiety: Poorly formulated diets may provide insufficient satiety despite adequate calories.
- Ageing/Slower metabolism: As the metabolism of your pet slows down, it means they are not capable of digesting the same portions of food, as fed when they were younger/had a faster metabolism rate.
- Neutering: After neutering, energy requirements often decrease while appetite may increase, making portion adjustments important.
- Free feeding: Your pet may eat an excess amount of food if not portioned properly. This is why creating set feeding times and appropriately portioned meals determined by your pet’s weight is important in keeping them healthy.
- Excess treats:Treats provide very little nutritional value and can disrupt your pet’s nutritional balance. As such an excess intake of treats can lead to your pets gaining weight.
- Table scraps:Because human food is not formulated for pets, table scraps create imbalanced nutrition in your pets.
These signs are often subtle and very easy to miss. Pet owners when tackling the issue of weight gain should look into observing the behaviours of their pets to assess their needs.
How to Manage Weight
So how do we correctly manage the weight of their pets? Pet owners need to remember that proper weight management lies in consistency and routine. You need to manage when and how you are administrating your pet’s food:
- Portion control: Portions following weight + activity-based guidelines are key in managing your pet’s weight.
- Routine: This helps establish healthy habits within pets.
- Activity: To use the energy provided by food, combine diet with exercise. This prevents excess energy from stockpiling.
- Feeding habits: Avoid free-feeding, measure food accurately, monitor body condition monthly and limit treats to <10% daily calories.
Successful weight management depends on appropriate calorie intake, consistent feeding practices, regular activity and a nutritionally balanced diet. A nutritious meal focusing on high-quality nutrition, rather than quantitative, goes a long way in preventing weight gain in pets.
For pet owners concerned that their pet is overweight, may consider utilizing a specialised diet for losing weight.
Weight Management Products and KEOS’ Solution
Weight management diets are designed specifically to help pets lose weight. High quality diets ensure that the feed makes them feel satisfied after meals, support healthy muscle maintenance, reduce unnecessary calorie intake and maintain proper digestion and energy levels. Pet owners when deciding the right diet should consider the quality of the diet and make informed decisions.
A proper diet offers:
- Satiety: Helping Pets Feel Full
One of the biggest challenges in weight management is hunger. Reducing the amount of food is not enough, as pets will feel hungry and engage in behaviours such as:
- Beg more frequently
- Search for extra food
- Become restless around meal times
This encourages overeating, leading to overweight pets. This is where satiety becomes important. Satiety refers to the feeling of fullness after eating. Diets that improve satiety help pets feel satisfied with appropriate meal portions rather than requiring excessive amounts of food.
- Fiber: Supporting Fullness and Digestion
Fiber plays a major role in many weight management formulas. While fiber itself is not a primary nutrient source like protein or fat, it helps regulate digestion and contributes to feelings of fullness. It helps by:
- Slowing digestion slightly
- Increase meal volume without heavily increasing calories
- Help pets feel fuller for longer periods
- Support stool quality and digestive regularity
Fibre plays a key role in keeping your pets full, while helping with digestion so your pets avoid overeating.
- Controlled Calorie Density: More Appropriate Energy Intake
Weight management diets typically have a more balanced level of energy content considering weight-prone and inactive pets. This is to avoid providing excess energy which would be stockpiled into fat. However, although providing less energy content, the nutritional value of high quality weight control diets remains the same.
Allowing for a filling meal at reasonable volumes without excessive caloric intakes.
- Balanced Protein: Supporting Muscle While Managing Fat
Unbalanced nutrition, through reduction of food, can lead to unforeseen consequences such as loss of muscles. The ideal healthy body of a pet has a blend of muscles and healthy amounts of fat. As such a high quality diet would offer balanced protein levels. Proper protein inclusion helps:
- Maintain lean muscle mass
- Support recovery and daily activity
- Prevent unhealthy muscle loss during weight control
Weight management is not eliminating all fat, but reducing excess body fat.
- Digestibility: Making Nutrition More Efficient
Digestibility refers to how efficiently a pet can break down and absorb nutrients from food. Meaning a high quality diet should help your pets:
- Utilize nutrients more effectively
- Support stable digestion
- Maintain better stool quality
Utilizing nutrients efficiently ensures there is no waste, allowing for your pets to obtain more value from appropriately portioned meals.
These are all characteristics present in KEOS+’s weight management products for pets. To support pet owners and their pet’s weight management journey, KEOS has developed weight management diets for both dogs and cats. These diets are specially formulated to reduce the energy content, thus preventing excess calorie intake, while increasing satiety so your pets will feel full. Controlling, protein and fibres to maintain every day bodily health in pets. Our solution coming from our KEOS+ product line also benefits from our proprietary technology; NATURAL SHIELD (which you can learn more from here).
Effective weight management is not about starving pets or dramatically reducing food. Instead, it focuses on providing appropriate calories while maintaining complete and balanced nutrition. Still, a proper diet is still useless if not supplemented with the measures mentioned previously. It is all about balancing activity, with routine and correctly portioned nutrition.
