Best Weight Management Brands
While the amount of food you feed your dog plays a significant role in maintaining his weight, you also need to think about the type of food you give him. The following brands are particularly recommended to help owners control their dogs weight:
- Lifes Abundance Weight Loss Formula
- Natures Select High Protein
Cooking Chicken For Homemade Dog Food
Cook the chicken by boiling it in a little water. It is important that all bones are removed from the cooked chicken. Let the chicken cool than dice the chicken into bit size chunks. Shredding it is also fine. The chicken is cooked when the juices inside run clear. You can use white or dark meat or ground chicken.
Step 2:
How Do I Know If My Dog Needs To Gain Or Lose Weight
The ideal weight for your dog varies based on its size, breed and age. And some dogs have a smaller or larger build than other pups of the same breed. Because of this, it is hard to state the exact weight range your dog needs. Instead, you and your vet can assess whether they are at or close to an ideal weight.
A good way to tell if your dog is at a healthy weight is by looking at them from various angles. When looking at your dog from above, you should be able to see a defined waist. When viewing from the sides, you should be able to see a tucked-in belly. The ribs may also be slightly visible, but they should never be very prominent. And when you touch the sides of the dog, you should be able to feel the ribs without pressing too hard. They should feel like they have a small layer of fat over them.
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How Do I Get My Dog On A Feeding Schedule
The best way to get your dog on a feeding schedule is to keep it at 2 meals a day. Only allow your dog to eat during your specified time. Put the food bowl down for 5 minutes at mealtime and pick it up after that even if your dog hasnt fed. Then, place the bowl down at the next feeding time and let your dog eat for 5-10 minutes. Remember that some dogs can be picky eaters. Also, if you suspect that your dog is sick, contact your veterinarian.
When My Dog Is Hungry She Pesters Me Until I Feed Her Do You Have Any Suggestions
It is often easier to give in to the dog that wakes you at four in the morning to be fed or the dog that stares at you during dinner or television time until you relent. These dogs have trained us well and know exactly which buttons to press when it comes to getting their way. Here are some tips for handling your pleading pup:
- Do not use a self-feeder. While this seems obvious, auto-feeders are nothing more than unlimited candy machines to a fat dog.
- If you do use an automatic feeder, use one that opens with a timer. This way you can measure out the proper amount and divide it into daily meals.
- Pet your dog or play with him when he begs for food. Many dogs substitute food for affection so flip the equation and you may find that playtime displaces mealtime.
- Go for a walk with your dog when he begs. The distraction and interaction may be just enough to make him forget his desire for food.
- Feed small meals frequently – especially give a last feeding for those dogs that like to wake you up in the wee hours begging for more goodies – divide the total volume or calories into four to six smaller meals – whatever you do, do not feed extra food.
- When the bowl is empty and your dog is pleading, add a few kibbles to the bowl. A few means only a few – not a handful. Keep a few kibbles separate from your dogâs measured daily ration for this purpose.
- Offer fresh water instead of food. If your dog is eyeing the empty food bowl, a drink of cold, fresh water may satisfy the craving.
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Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Healthy Weight
Top 5 Ingredients: 1. Deboned Chicken, 2. Chicken Meal, 3. Brown Rice, 4. Barley, 5. Pea Fiber
Blue Buffalo is an absolute gem for dog parents that are weight conscious when it comes to their pooches.
This dog food is free from wheat, corn, and soy and contains L-carnitine which helps in the development of the muscular system. Not only that, but the Omega-3 and 6 fatty acids in this weight control dry dog food are great for developing and maintaining a lush coat.
What To Look For In Weight Management Foods
When picking any kind of dog food, you should always look for high-quality ingredients, such as real meat proteins and recognizable foods. Its best to avoid options made with meat by-products, corn, BHT or BHA, corn syrup, artificial coloring or flavoring, soy and MSG.
For weight management dog foods, you should look for one thats high in protein and fiber.
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What Causes Dogs To Gain Weight
Dogs gain weight for one, and only one, reason: They metabolize more calories than they burn off through exercise. The same principle holds true for all biological systems.
Ingested energy must be used in some way, and if your dogs breakfast isnt used for chasing the mailman, itll be used to create additional body tissue primarily fat.
Now, there are several things that can alter the number of calories your dog requires or change the way in which your dogs body uses the calories she eats.
For example, just because your dog eats 100 Calories of chicken doesnt mean her body will extract all 100 Calories portions of the food may pass through her system intact and the bacteria in her digestive tract will consume some of the calories.
Additionally, some dogs can utilize more of the calories in a given food than others, some dogs burn more calories while exercising than others, and some foods may even alter a dogs metabolic rate. So, it isnt always possible to figure out the exact number of calories your dog is consuming or burning.
But, the ultimate cause for weight gain is an imbalance in the calorie-in / calorie-out arithmetic.
Best Weight Management Dog Foods
Is your dog overweight or underweight? Weight-related issues can undermine your pets health and can even shorten their lifespan. As such, canine weight management is something that pet parents cannot afford to overlook. To know if your dog is of a healthy weight, compare their weight with the average for their breed if it exceeds it to a large extent, your pet needs to slim down, and if it is less than it, your pet needs to fatten up.
A proper diet is an important part of canine weight management, and you will need to monitor what your pet eats to make sure their diet meets their nutritional requirements. There are specific weight management dog foods available. If you have concerns about feeding your pet commercial dog food, you can always opt for a home-cooked dog food diet.
Here is one of best weight management dog food in the market:
Scouts Pick
Taste of the Wild Wetlands Grain Free High Protein Real Meat Recipe Natural Dry Dog Food with Real Roasted Duck 30lb
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Best Overall: Hills Science Diet Adult Large
- Includes everything we look for in a great weight loss recipe for Rotties
- Great macronutrient profile to help shed the pounds
This weight control blend from Royal Canin is incredibly expensive, but many online reviewers have agreed that its effective at helping large-breed dogs lose weight. Its often recommended by veterinarians for overweight dogs, which does lend some credence to its effectiveness at weight loss. In fact, you have to get vet authorization just to purchase it!
This blend contains just 267 calories per cup, making it easy to keep your Rottie in a caloric deficit so it can lose weight. Youll also see that theres just 9% fat, which will further aid your fat loss efforts.
Additionally, youll notice that theres L-carnitine on the ingredients list, helping your dog to burn fat more effectively for faster weight loss overall.
On the guaranteed analysis, you can see that this food contains tons of glucosamine and sufficient chondroitin to boost your buddys joint and bone health.
Things dont look quite as great on the ingredients list though. Corn is listed as the primary ingredient, and you wont even find an animal-based protein until the third ingredient, which is chicken by-product meal. Still, at 26% protein, it does contain sufficient amounts to keep your Rottweiler healthy.
What I wish it had: More high-quality animal protein sources!
Best Weight Management Dog Food Options
For best results, your pets weight management diet should include the following:
Food with high-quality fat content. This includes chicken, turkey, beef, pork, coconut oil, canola oil, and flax seed oil. Fats are necessary for maintaining your dogs skin health and coat quality, for maintaining reproductive health, for reducing inflammation, and for ensuring the proper development and functioning of cells, tissues, nerves, and muscles.
Food that contains a large amount of protein. Your dog can get protein from meat, fish, dairy products, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and grains. Protein intake is essential for skin cell formation, muscle tissue build-up, hormone production, enzyme production, and hair growth. Proteins also fortify your dogs immune system.
Food that contains a healthy amount of carbohydrates. This includes vegetables like asparagus, peppers, pumpkins, carrots, cauliflower, cabbages, broccoli, celery, spinach, squashes, beets, radishes, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and fruits like bananas, apricots, apples, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, plums, mangoes, melons, pineapples, and papaya.
Food that contains prebiotics. This includes beet, banana, garlic, artichoke, chicory root, wheat, and barley. Prebiotics are easy to digest and therefore offer your pet more nourishment.
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Wellness Core Natural Grain
Reducing the fat in your dogs food shouldnt mean sacrificing the flavor. This Wellness CORE Natural Grain-Free Reduced Fat Dry Dog Food features a tasty combination of chicken and turkey in a nutrient-rich but low-fat formula. It contains fresh, deboned turkey as the main ingredient with supplemental protein from lean sources like turkey meal and chicken meal. This is a grain-free recipe made with digestible carbohydrates like peas and potatoes, supplemented with plenty of fiber and probiotics for healthy digestion. It also contains chelated minerals to ensure optimal nutrient absorption with fresh fruits and vegetables to provide natural sources for key nutrients as well.
- Pros: Fresh turkey as main ingredients, provides 33% protein, low in fat and calories, digestible grain-free carbohydrates, rich in omega fatty acids, fresh fruits and vegetables, chelated minerals, probiotics
- Cons: May be too high in fiber for some dogs, some dogs may be sensitive to chicken ingredients
What To Look For In A Dog Food For Weight Loss
Your dogs basic nutritional needs wont change with his body weight. Hell need more protein and fat as a puppy than as an adult, but throughout his life his minimum requirements remain largely the same. This means that youll need to be extra careful when shopping for weight loss dog food to make sure youre reducing your dogs total calorie intake without negatively affecting his nutrition.
Here are some things to look for in a dog food for weight control:
Now that you have a better understanding of your dogs minimum nutritional needs and how to meet them while also helping him lose weight, youre ready to start shopping! If youre still not sure where to start, check out our top picks for the best dog foods for weight loss below.
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How Many Calories Does Your Dog Need
Caloric needs are one of the most important things to figure out when trying to manage your dogs weight. This will give you a target to guide your feeding practices.
But it isnt always easy to determine exactly how many calories your dog needs. Individual dogs have different metabolic rates and burn different amounts of calories over the course of a day.
The best way to figure out your dogs caloric requirements is by first determining her Resting Energy Requirements . This tells you the number of calories your dog needs to breathe, pump blood and perform other critical body processes.
To determine a dogs RER, you raise her body weight in kilograms to the ¾ power . This number is then multiplied by 70, which gives you the number of Calories she needs per day.
To borrow an example from Ohio State University Veterinary Medical Center:
A 10-kilogram dog = 703/4 = 400 Calories = RER
This number is then multiplied by one of several factors to arrive at her true caloric needs.
For example:
Reaching Your Dogs Target Weight Through Exercise
Controlling food and calories alone only gets us so far in a dog weight-loss routine. Weight loss in dogs depends on reducing caloric intake and increasing caloric expenditures .
Talk with your veterinarian about your dogs unique capabilities and needs before starting a new exercise routine.
At your dogs weigh-ins, your vet will adjust their diet and exercise routine to cause a rate of 1-2 percent loss per week.
Many dogs lose weight in a stair-step fashion, losing quite a bit over a two-week period, and then not losing much over the next two weeks. Alterations in diet plans are not usually done unless weight has not changed at two sequential examinations.
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Halo Holistic Healthy Weight Grain
Spots Stew Healthy Weight formulation comes in with the second-highest calorie content in this list, although it can still be considered as below-average. Its protein and fat contents are also below-average, making this Halo product a good choice for those that would like to have more bioavailable nutrients because of the exceptional digestibility of its ingredients. It has l-carnitine, too which can help improve metabolism leading to more efficient burning of fat.
Calorie content: 380 per cup
Minimum %age of proteins: 24
Minimum %age of fats: 12
1st five ingredients: turkey, dried chickpeas, dried peas, dried lentils, and dried egg product
Contains essential fatty acids and l-carnitine
Blue Wilderness Healthy Weight Dog Food
This is a sponsored placement, in which an advertiser pays a fee to be featured in this article. Learn more
About: Blue Wilderness Healthy Weight Dog Food is a grain-free, meat-rich recipe designed to mimic the ancestral diet of wild canines. It has more calories than some of the other weight-loss foods we discuss here, but it is still deserving of serious consideration especially for dogs who require a grain-free diet.
Features: Most Blue Wilderness recipes feature a variety of proteins, but this recipe only contains three primary proteins: deboned chicken, chicken meal, and menhaden fish meal .
But this is to be expected of a weight-loss recipe, given the caloric density of proteins. Nevertheless, this food still has more than 350 calories per cup, so you dont have to worry about your pooch going hungry while shes shedding weight.
This is also a grain-free recipe, so it uses things like peas and tapioca starch to provide most of the carbohydrate content. Blueberries, cranberries, parsley, kelp and several other ingredients provide vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, and five different probiotic strains are included to help regulate your dogs digestive system.
Blue Wilderness recipes are made in the USA.
PROS
CONS
Calories per Cup: 353
Deboned Chicken, Chicken Meal , Pea Protein, Peas, Tapioca Starch…,
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Eagle Pack Reduced Fat Adult Dry Dog Food
Top 5 Ingredients: 1. Pork Meal, 2. Dehulled Barley, 3. Ground Brown Rice, 4. Turkey Meal, 5. Chicken Fat
Want your dog to lose weight in a healthy style? Eagle Pack Reduced Fat Dog Food can make that happen with their protein-rich low-fat formula. The recipes calorie content is cut down significantly without compromising on nutritional value, which helps your dog become stronger, healthier, and more active as they lose extra weight.
Most of its protein content comes from chicken and fish, while carbs are sourced from wholesome grains like barley and oatmeal. Omega fatty acids are also plentiful in the dog food so that your dogs coat and skin remain nourished and in top condition. Since the recipe is free from corn, wheat, and artificial additives, you can confidently feed it to your sensitive pup.
How To Know If Your Rottweiler Is Overweight
Before you start making big changes to your Rotties diet, its important to be certain that your dog is actually overweight.
There are two main ways of determining this.
First, you can base it on your Rotties weight. According to the AKC breed standards for Rottweilers, males should weigh between 95-135 pounds and females should weigh 80-100 pounds. If your dog weighs more than the top of the healthy weight range for its sex, then they are most likely overweight.
Of course, your dog doesnt have to be that heavy to be overweight. Some male Rottweilers, for instance, should be just 95 pounds at a healthy weight. If your Rottie is on the smaller side, then they could be overweight even if their weight falls within the AKCs guidelines.
As you can likely tell, the major problem with using your Rottweilers weight to determine if its overweight or healthy is that each individual is different. Because of this, a more accurate way to tell if your Rottie is overweight is to start by referring to a growth chart that takes height into consideration and check your Rotties body condition score.
When checking your Rotties body condition score, youll be assigning your dog a number on a scale based on factors such as whether you can see or feel their ribs or not. Your dogs score on this test will help you to better understand just how overweight your Rottie is, as well as helping you to determine when theyve reached a healthy weight.
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