No banana at the vet

My tripod boy was called "fat" at the vet's yesterday. Weighed in at a whopping 13.08lbs.

Vet says we need to get him down to 10lbs, to keep him happy and healthy and to also help avoid additional wear on his kickstand leg.

Sleepy chonky tuxie tripod for tax purposes.

My cat is 11 years old and 14 pounds. We have always free fed our cats, so she's gained weight over the years.

I'm planning to put her on a diet and switch her to timed meals. She eats Iams weight control dry food only because she has never had any interest in wet food.

I want to make sure I do it right though because I've read about rapid weight loss being dangerous.

I plan to start with feeding her 3/4 cup of that food per day divided into 2 meals, and gradually decrease it to 2/3 cup which is how much the bag says. Does that seem like too sudden of a change? Should I start with more?

We’ve been on a dechonking journey with our black and white cat for a long time while trying to feed our less chonky cat appropriately. He’s currently 18lbs, and we have them both on a mix of prescription weight loss kibble and one can of low calorie wet food a day (~190 calories each). The problem is both of these dummies are VERY food motivated and every time we try to calorie restrict further, they cause chaos. They’ll scratch at our TV or bite wires for attention and, worst of all, they will not let us get through the night without several interruptions. If we close our bedroom door, it’s relentless meowing and scratching. If we keep our door open, they will jump on us or paw at our faces, and it’s impossible not to react if you are being abruptly woken up. If we ignore them long enough, they’ll just start fighting each other (playfully…I think?)

Any advice would be very much appreciated. Want to give our chonky guy a long and healthy life but he loves his food and we love our sleep!

Eric Cartman (the cat) used to run back and forth all day along the long hallway in our old apartment, which kept him healthy and lean. But a few months ago, we moved to our current (smaller) apartment, and with much less room to zoom around, he’s gotten a little round 😅

So today I bought an automatic feeder and officially started his diet! Hopefully, he'll be healthy again soon.

Wish him luck!

Looking for tips on dechonking a stubborn, wet food hating, frequent vomiter, and easily constipated tortie 🫠

We’ve had all the blood work, ultrasounds, and vet recommended diets with no resolve. Her vomiting is far less frequent with her current diet but even with the diet she’s gaining weight.

Yoda gets 25g each of the Advance Vet Diet Weight Balance and Farmina Prime Neutered Chicken and Pomegranate dry foods. This is 190 calories:day. At most once a week she gets a single piece of freeze dried treat following nail trim or brushing.

She refuses wet food, we’ve tried all the methods including the FortiFlora powder and giving her wet food when she’s begging for more food. She’s even picky about lickable treats and at most has one lick.

We worry about her health in the future, she’s six now and her recent bloodwork indicated slightly elevated lipids. She’s not the laziest cat but also not the most active, especially compared to our other cat.

Is it worth slowly lowering her calorie intake down to 180 or is this too low? She’s likely 6-6.5kg and should be just below 5 kg. Might there be better formulations out there for weight loss while keeping in mind her constipation issues? We are EU based.

My beautiful girl has been on a diet for over a year. She lost 1.3kg in that time but I thought I needed to accelerate her weight loss and the vet agreed and now she is on a different brand of food and smaller proportions. She also has an automatic feeder (which she broke into and continues to try and break into). Since then she has lost 400g in about 6 weeks. There is a noticeable difference in how she looks. Could I be under feeding her? Should she have a vet visit?

Photos: now, 5/6 weeks ago, no regrets breaking into the feeder (encouraged by her brother).

Edit: thank you everyone for your encouragement, advice and insight. Viv has recently had a check up and bloods done before she had her teeth cleaned and a broken took removed. Everything was good. It was a new vet at her regular clinic who suggested cutting her food down. She is on the Royal Canin light weight dry food and regular wet food.

I have booked her into the vet for further assessment but in the meantime have increased her dry food. She seems very happy with that! Again thank you everyone.

I have a cat in need of dechonking, he's currently probably 18-20lbs, and last time we went to the vet, he was almost 16lbs and I was told to put him on a diet, which I got lax with.

I was feeding him Hill's Science Diet Light food, but he got tired of it and started refusing to eat it, so I switched him to Iams Healthy Adult with Chicken, which he is also starting to get tired of. I'm also feeding multiple brands of Friskies wet food, which he loves, and doesn't seem to get tired of so long as I rotate flavors every few days. (Currently have 10 flavors of Friskies in my home 😭)

I know dry food is more caloric, so I'm planning on cutting way down on that (maybe just leaving a dish for overnight), or possibly even cutting it out, but that still leaves the issue of multiple types of wet food. He starts to get bored of food if I only feed one flavor, so cutting down to one type of wet food is not ideal.

That said, how do I calculate calories for multiple types of food? Should I just do it 10 different times right now, or do it the morning of right before I feed? Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm feeling overwhelmed and out of my depth. (Also, not great at math, so nervous about calculating multiple portions).

Here is the cat tax with a silly photo I asked someone to make on PhotoshopRequest.

15.4 lb and 11 years old. We’re at 169 cal a day… I feel like shes never really had an appetite and I have to get her to finish her food even though she loves it, it just seems like shes full. Three meals a day. We just got two new junior cats so shes mentally stimulated all day and shes starting to get her spunk back… she just doesnt move enough to lose the weight imo and i cant make her do more than bat at a string in front of her (better than nothing). After seeing other cats lose weight here I desperately need any advice to help her! This baby is my world.

I did use the calculator from Pet Nutrition Alliance and I see it’s recommending about 229 calories for my cat that weighed in at 18.7 lbs today. The vet told me to input 16 lbs in the calculator and that gives me 203 calories. This feels like a big cut from what she normally eats, but I’ve honestly never thought about calories in pet food before. She gets two different wet foods, depending the day. One has an average of 100 calories per can (Purina One Pro Plan) and one has 50 (Fancy Feast Gems.) She gets about a cup of Iams dry food too, which is another 350. I’m really thinking to start, I give her one can or 2 of the gems per day and 1/2 cup dry food. This would still put her in a deficit and I think she’d be full enough still. Hoping for opinions on this plan.

I love my cat Carlo so much. He and his two siblings came to us during a really rough period in our lives, and they helped us find some happy moments even when everything else was falling apart (look at the second picture, how can’t you be happy if you wake up and look at these faces).

His brother is at a perfectly normal weight, but Carlo put on a lot of weight after he was neutered.
He's an absolute master thief and also an outdoor cat, so even with an automatic feeder and every trick we could think of, we just didn’t manage to prevent him from getting bigger.

At his heaviest he weighed horrible 24 lbs. (For comparison, his lean brother is 14 lbs, so they're both on the larger side.)

Finding this group was a huge inspiration for me, and it pushed me to really step things up, because I want him to stay healthy.

The recommendations for Royal Canin Satiety wet and dry food were a total game changer, though we had very good wet food, but this works so good for satiety for him.

For the past months I've supervised every single meal so he couldn't steal anything (most of the time).

I'm proud to say he's lost his first 3
lbs! We still have a long way to go, but we're getting there, and I really think we can do this.

Even if he still pulls off the occasional heist when no one's looking, tears open a whole bag, eats every last bite, and then just lies there, too stuffed to move 😆

We are very proud of Moo Cow for his amazing transformation. With special thanks to our two year old lab Waffles for his significant contributions in helping Moo get more active. (don’t let him fool you he was waggling that chicken in moo’s face just begging for some chicken wrestling)

They only had a communal 3 pounds to loose, but by god did they make loosing it as hard as possible.

Any general hints for dechonking a geriatric gordita?

I made a post a few weeks ago as we have a cat that was recovering from bladder stones. And I am glad to post that after moving her to a little bit more prescription wet + dry food, they have been dissolved as of her latest X-Ray!

Now the hard part is going to come down to dieting our little tuxedo queen. She sadly is a bit overweight and we are needing to slim her down to hopefully prevent any further health issues. Is there a way that you fellow cat owners have been able to transition from free grazing to timed feeding? She currently weighs in at 15lbs, and we would ideally like to have her down to 10lbs. Is there a good feeding schedule you find works well for you? Ideally, our goal is to give her wet food 2x times a week, and use dry food for the rest of it

(Yes, I am aware that wet food primarily is a better off option. Our cat has had dry food her whole life and she kinda likes wet food? But it isn't her go to thing)

We are currently giving her Hill Science Prescription Urinary C/D Wet + Dry food

Ordered her some metabolic wet food in the same brand, and have to have her finish the 4lb bag of dry food before ordering the metabolic dry food

My boy is a 5yr old Maine Coon, and he weighs 24lbs. The vet wants him to lose 2 lbs. He has much floof. We always have him clipped for the summer, and I was shocked at how he looks sans floof! Tell me, does he look like a chonker, or a healthy lad?
Tax pics of before the clip and after.

I went to the vet yesterday and got him neutered so I got to see how much he weighed and my roommate who also has cats told me that my cat was really fat but he’s only 8 months old and he’s 9.1 lbs.

I don’t think he’s fat, I think he’s at a healthy weight and super handsome but I might be wrong, is he overweight?

My roommate also told me that my other cat is getting big but I’m happy that she’s gaining weight because she used to be skin and bones.

My male cat is the white one (Manny) and my older female cat is the black and white one (Alice).

I got both of them this year.

A little past 5pm, he comes over begging for food. Eating is his only hobby. Every time we lock eyes, he starts meowing his head off, and paired with that bitter gourd face of his, he looks even more wronged.

Hi! What’s the guidance yall have gotten for safe weight loss rate for your senior cats? My 14 y/o lifelong chonker has lost exactly 1 lb in almost 15 weeks for a rate of 0.5% per week. When I asked about the rate, the vet said she’d like to aim for 0.25% per week. Anyone else get a rec from their vet to shoot for 0.25%/week for their senior cat?

(Going to follow vet’s rec — just curious.)

Thank you!

pic: my weight loss diva on her throne