? HILLS METABOLIC weight mgmt food for cats

Hi. I am asking for a friend. There is a cat that is very overweight - had blood work which I am waiting to see, and the vet is recommending subject food. Cat is 22# - gained 2# in the last 3 months so I am concerned she is also going to test as diabetic. I can't find this food on the lists. High in carbs? I am not a fan of Hills or script foods to begin with. I would think an all wet food diet would be the better way to go. Not sure on the blood yet but diabetic or not, anyone have experience with this food? I am guessing she's recommending dry and wet. Any info appreciated.

 

scroll down to pages 62 and 63 on Dr Pierson's list -- the prescription foods are listed after the alphabetic ones

looks like the carb percentages are 28 to 31%

my guess is the "metabolic" refers to less fat than some of the diet foods

 

The metabolic canned is 30 carbs so the dry would be more. I would definitely not use this food for any cat. Giving it to an overweight cat would be even worse.
I would feed plain ordinary low carb canned food and put the cat on a weight reduction diet.
Cats can’t lose weight quickly so your friend would need to research the safe way for her to lose weight.
There is nothing special about prescription diets

 

My 17 lb relatively young healthy cats are down to 11.5-12 after more than two years of two fixed size meals per day. I don't think rapid weight loss is a good idea for cats or humans unless there is some associated health issue. They are definitely more active. Now to get them on to a wet food diet.

 

Thank you - and I have a follow up question - this same cat previously was getting FF Pate plus dry food - Royal Canin SO - probably a lot of it -- so much so that she ended up gaining weight. Where do I find the carbs in the dry SO please? I don't see dry food charts only canned / wet food. Thank you.

 

It has to be listed somewhere on the bag, but might be in small font in the corner. It will probably tell you calories per lb/kg. You can then weigh out on a kitchen food scale the amount you want to feed. Get a used food container, like a lightly colored yogurt container and put a line inside at the top of the food. Then you can fill to line and dump it in their dish.

 

I am looking for the carbs %. I don't see it on the label.

 

You won't find carbs on the label. If you contact the company, they may tell you the carbs. The SO wet foods are over 20% carbs, dry food will be even higher.

Back in the day, when I worked part time at the local shelter, we had a room where we kept all the overweight cats so we could control the food given. They got a veterinary prescribed "reducing diet". All of them gained weight.

 

Here is a link to a carb calculator you can use. However, in the US they usually just list minimum or maximum values, so the percentage you get is really just an estimate.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NOyUfaKxNa580Wnz-0c0_kRQgvlMJgnu/view

 

I think that what ever the % of carbs in the wet food is going to be over the 20% of the wet so way high, when I changed all my cats (thank's to Babu) to low carb food al the non diabetic lose some weight, they weren't fat all the contrary but still lose some so I think just changing to a low carb high protein diet will help, I would ask the vet to check his thyroid as well as his blood glucose