Animal Medical Center
Your Pet's Second Best Friend
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Carefully following a restricted calorie diet is absolutely essential to weight control. There are three parts of the POP Diet Plan: We also offer some Tips & Tricks for a successful POP Diet.
An important early step in your pet's POP Plan will be selecting an appropriate prescription weight loss diet for your dog. We will help you choose a new main diet for your dog and will also help you choose appropriate treats for your dog if you like to feed treats. Your dog will need a prescription weight loss diet to allow him to lose weight through calorie restriction while still receiving adequate vitamins and other nutrients. Over the counter "low calorie" foods are not sufficiently calorie restricted to facilitate weight loss, although they can be used to maintain weight loss once a healthy weight is maintained. Our prescription weight loss diets are lower in calories than over the counter "low calorie" foods and are designed to be palatable (tasty!) and filling while providing your pet with all the nutrients he needs. Strict calorie restriction on a non-prescription diet can lead to nutrient imbalances, is not generally successful for weight loss and should be avoided. Choosing the Best Diet Food for Your Dog We carry a variety of excellent veterinary diets to appeal to even finicky eaters. Some dogs prefer one brand over another or canned over dry. The right food for your dog is the one that works! Our main prescription diet lines are Hills Prescription Diets as well as Royal Canin. We are also happy to order Purina and Iams/Eukanuba prescription diets by special request. High Fiber, High Water or High Protein? What's the deal?? Fiber: Weight loss diets typically use "fillers" to create a feeling of fullness or satisfaction without lots of calories. This filling effect of fiber is why people on a diet crunch on celery or air popped pop corn. Traditional pet weight loss diets, such as Hill's r/d or Royal Canin Calorie Control High Fiber are high in fiber because fiber fills us up without adding calories. This approach has proven effective for many, many pets. One down side of a high fiber diet is that all that fiber leads to a lot of poop, which can be inconvenient. Because the high fiber approach is a tried and true method and has proven safe and effective for many years, it is usually the first recommendation of nutritional experts for most dogs. Water: Like fiber, drinking lots of water can also help fill the stomach, so canned foods are often recommended for weight loss since the added water can help fill the stomach. Unlike for cats, there are not any major known benefits to feeding dogs canned food, so we generally recommend that you stick with whichever formulation you have used in the past. Which ever food you choose, it is always important to ensure that your dog drinks plenty of fresh water every day. Protein: Recent advances in the science of weight loss have suggested that a diet relatively high in protein can help achieve weight loss better than a lower protein diet. Ask any 10 weight loss gurus whether high protein is the answer to successful weight loss, and you'll likely get 10 different answers. In human weight management, many current diets (like Atkins or South Beach) emphasize a high protein content. High protein content is believed to help people and pets feel fuller on fewer calories. Royal Canin Calorie Control High Protein is high in protein content. Click on an image below for detailed information from the manufacturer on each recommended diet.
When your pet starts POP, you may purchase a "Diet Sampler Pack" with samples of appropriate weight loss diet foods. This sample pack provides an economical way to try appropriate diets without purchasing an entire bag or case of each food. You will offer your pet samples of these diets over a few days until you find the diet or combination of diets that your pet prefers. You'll want to continue with your pet's regular diet while trying these sample foods. It is never a good idea to suddenly change your dog's diet as this can cause stomach upset and also can make it less likely your dog will accept a new food. At meal time during the sample period, you'll first offer your dog a half size meal of the sample food. Allow him 15 minutes to try the sample and eat as much as he will. Then, add a half-size meal of your pet's regular food to the remainder of the sample and allow your dog to finish whatever he wants. Remove all food after 15 more minutes. (Meal times should generally be limited to 15 to 30 minutes.) After a few to several meals, try the next sample, and choose the food that your dog likes best. Once you have chosen a food, it is time to come back in for a POP Consultation with a nurse so we can calculate the appropriate feeding amounts each day for your dog. Treats: Healthy Treats May Make Up to 10% of Daily Calories If you don't now feed treats, there is no need to start! Treats can replace up to 10% of your dog's calorie intake each day, so if you want to feed treats, you need to count them and know how many calories they are so that you do not accidentally sabotage the diet by feeding too many high calorie treats. Of course, we'll need to account for the treat calories in our feeding plan by reducing the quantity of main diet. For a dog, much of the pleasure in a treat is simply that you give it as a reward and so your dog comes to associate the treat with the pleasure of your approval. Dogs can love healthy treats! Choose treats that are low in calories. You'll be surprised how many dogs truly love frozen green beans or air popped pop corn! Choosing the Best Treats for Your Dog So long as you count the calories, you may feed your dog any treat you wish so long as the total treats are not more than 10% of the daily calorie allowance. If your dog has a favorite treat that you can't go without, that is fine, feed it. Just make sure to bring us the packaging so we can help you count how many calories are in each treat and include the treats in your dog's POP Feeding Plan. If you like to feed more than a very few small treats a day, it is best to choose low calorie treats for most or all of their dog's treats. High fiber treats such as vegetables are filling and the crunch factor of frozen vegetables is especially satisfying for many dogs. You may feed these treats just as you would any other treat or you can even add a vegetable treat to your dog's meal. Some good treat choices include:
Establish the POP Feeding Plan Once you have selected a diet, you and your pet will come in for a POP consultation with a nurse and she (or he) will help you finalize a feeding plan for your pet using your preferred food(s), along with any treats you plan to continue to feed. We will provide you with a written plan telling you exactly how much to feed your pet, allowing for treats if you like to provide treats and providing feeding tips for weight management. We will also provide you with a marked measuring cup for measuring your pet's food if you will be using dry food. Your pet's POP Plan will include a feeding plan, an exercise plan and a schedule of POP Weigh-In consultations to ensure progress over time. We will refine, adjust and revise the feeding plan as needed over time. Each POP Weigh-In visit will include an assessment of what is and what is not working for your dog and a revision of the plan as needed. Food Diary Sometimes Needed We generally expect to see about 1% weight loss per week on a POP Plan. If weight loss is not adequate, we can trim back the food amounts or increase exercise. If we suspect that your pet has an unusually slow metabolism or that snacks, treats or table scraps are sabotaging your pet's diet, keeping a detailed diary of exactly what your pet eats for several days can help us determine exactly what is going on and develop a solution for your pet. If you need to keep a food diary, make sure that all family members are on board with the plan and record every item they feed. Measure all amounts and collect copies of labels for all treats and foods that you feed so that we can count the calories for you. Keeping an accurate diary for 3 to 7 typical days is usually sufficient. Bring the diary to your next POP Weigh In so we can revise your pet's feeding plan using the information we learn from the diary.
Tips for dealing with the multi-pet household Keeping the dieting dog out of the other pet's food is one of the greatest challenges to weight loss. Some tips & tricks to solve this challenge include:
Don't forget your dog also needs Exercise to take the pounds off! |
Weight Loss Diet for Dogs
Main Diet: Prescription Weight Loss Formula
Tips & Tricks for a successful POP DietAnimal Medical Center
460 Hartman Run Road
Morgantown, WV 26505
(304) 292-0126
Your Pet's Second Best Friend
