@Ruth-Girl, This Is How Your Cat Can Be Slim Again!!!

A few days ago @ruth-girl shared with me privately a photo of her cat, "Katina", in all her...glory:

I am sure that we can all agree that's a very cute but fat as fuck cat.  To be fair though, I have seen much worse!

Worry not @ruth-girl, now researchers from the University of Illinois have all the answers to how you can slim down Katina! And surprise, surprise, it means to stop feeding your pussy snacks everytime it makes those annoying "human plox food" sounds:

This is how ruth's cat literally is every 5 minutes!

So, according to the new study, increased activity is only one part of solving the problem. Ruth's cat is an avid hunter so I think we got the activity factor covered. The other not surprisingly, is food intake.

So, what about food intake? First, like in humans, cat-dieting should be a slow, long-term process. And you have to keep reducing the caloric intake every now and then to account for the basal metabolic rate which also goes down as the fat melts away:

 "The intent with this diet was a healthy weight loss: getting rid of fat while maintaining lean mass. The big question was how much does it take to make cats lose weight, especially lazy neutered males? It turns out you have to keep reducing their food intake because they're not very active. It takes a long time," says Kelly Swanson, Kraft Heinz Company Endowed Professor in Human Nutrition in the Department of Animal Sciences and the Division of Nutritional Sciences at U of I. 

Another thing @ruth-girl has to be careful about is to reduce food intake slowly and gradually. Don't starve your cat or it could lead to serious problems:

"The risk with rapid weight loss, especially in a cat, is hepatic lipidosis. The body releases too much fat, and the liver gets bogged down. They can't handle that much. We targeted a 1.5 percent body weight loss per week, which falls in line with the range (0.5-2 percent per week) suggested by the American Animal Hospital Association." said Swanson.

To achieve the 1.5 % number, the researchers initially reduced food intake by 20%. But to keep the results they had to cut the intake little by little every week:

"That's a key point. When we go on a diet ourselves, we might lose a lot of weight in the first few weeks and then hit a road block. Same with these animals. We had to keep going down, but it can be hard to convince a pet owner to do that. You might get owners to reduce intake from 60 to 50 grams per day, but we're telling them they might have to go to 45 or 40 grams. We got really low, but we were monitoring them so they were healthy." said Swanson.

But what I found surprising with this study is that the researchers say that although it was hard to convince owners to put their cats on a diet, it was even harder to convince them that their baby was actually fat! So @ruth-girl.. What do ya think? Is your baby a fat slob or what?

"We've done some clinical studies in dogs showing that misconception. If you have a veterinarian do a BCS assessment of a pet and then have an owner do it, the owner will almost always underestimate the BCS. Owners need to acknowledge the weight status of their pets. The second thing that needs to change is the owner's behavior: getting them to reduce food intake to maintain a healthy BCS. Food companies recognize that many owners feed too much, so they're trying to formulate their diets so it's easier for the animals to maintain or lose weight even if an owner overfeeds." said Swanson.

Another thing researchers looked out for was for gut flora and how it was affected by diet. Again, nothing surprising here. During the 18-week study, some bacterias became more abundant, while others diminished in numbers. This is exactly what happens with humans that lose weight. In humans, we know today that when you lose weight the "good" bacteria typically go up and the bad ones go down. But the study didn't examine if that applied to cats. If I took a bet though I would put my money on the good guys :)

A final thing researchers looked out for was how diet affected activity levels:

"Their activity level didn't change much. Toward the end, they were becoming a little more active, but not statistically." said Swanson. 

Again, I bet my money that if the experiment lasted a bit more the difference would be statistically significant :)

Finally, the researchers recommend  cat owners to try and engage with their cats as much as possible to fasten their weight loss. Play with them, place the food further away, everything you can do, small or big, can have a nice compound effect in the long term. 

The Takeaway

The first thing to take is not to share any kinds of photos with me privately

Second, ruth-girl's cat is fat as fuck and if she is like most cat owners then she believes Katina is thin as a stick. Other than that, the study falls under (at least for male neutered cats) the water is wet category. If you want your cat to lose weight just gradually reduce its food and try to increase its activity levels. WOW!

 

Ok got to finish the post fast now... @ruth-girl is ringing my door... Don't be surprised if this is the last time you hear from me...

See you tomorrow! (hopefully)