Week 32 Diet Tip

Avoid switching foods during your dog’s diet

As you progress with your dog’s diet you may be tempted to introduce new foods. We recommend not doing this, as switching foods complicates portioning and will impact your dog’s diet response.

Once you find a low-calorie food your dog enjoys, keep feeding this food for the entirety of your dog’s weight loss diet.

Commercial foods and home-cooked recipes all vary in calorie and protein content. Which means each food type must be individually portioned according to your dog’s daily calorie allowance. The more foods introduced to your dog’s diet the more likely portioning errors will occur, resulting in stalled weight loss potentially setting your dieting efforts back a month or more.

Changing your dog’s food is also likely to affect your dog’s satiety (fullness) due to the differing protein and nutrient levels. This could result in your dog experiencing increased hunger despite being fed the same calorie allowance. Potential leading to your reduced compliance with portioning.

To introduce variety in your dog’s diet, use your dog’s treat allowance to provide healthy low calories treats (chopped fruit and vegetables) which can be mixed and matched on a daily basis.