Four Steps to Reduce Your Dog's Weight
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Does your pooch have a pouch? Excessive weight gain can be a serious detriment to your dog's overall health, quality of life and physical well-being. For this reason, a program for weight management should be incorporated to bring your dog back within the limits of reason. Here is a list of 4 steps to calculate the caloric requirement for weight loss and to estimate the rate of loss in an overweight dog.
The great thing about this system is that you don't need any complicated gadgets, just a scale, a good calculator, and a little information. Your vet can easily help you determine your dog's desired body weight. As with any diet, always contact your veterinarian before making any adjustments.
Here it goes:
Step 1 – Convert your dog's body weight to kilograms (kg). In case you don't know metric conversions off hand, 1 lb. is equal to 0.453 kilograms. So, let's say that your dog weighs 22 lbs; simply plug it into the equation.
22 (dog's current weight in lbs.) x 0.453 (metric conversion standard) = 9.966
For sake of simplicity, you can round the 9.966 to an even 10.
Step 2 – Next you're going to want to calculate the estimated caloric requirement at the desired weight. This is done by raising the body weight in kg to the power of 0.75 and then by multiplying that number by 132.
132 x (10)^0.75 = 742 kcal (kilocalories).
Step 3 – Determine the number of calories to feed for weight loss (this can be done easily by taking 60 or 70% of the value you got in Step 2).
742 x 0.60 = 445 kcal/day.
Step 4 – With this information, reduce the dog's intake to the level calculated in Step 3. Once the desired weight has been achieved, you can then gradually increase the number of calories to the amount that was calculated in Step 2.
To calculate the estimated rate of weight loss, subtract the step 3 value from the step 2 value. Take this result and divide 3500 by this value to determine the number of days to lose 1 pound. Example: 3500/(742 - 445) = 11.8 days.
With this easy-to-use formula, your canine companion will be on his way to a new, healthier lifestyle!