This is How Losing Weight Works for Your Dog Too

Tips and tricks for dog owners whose dog should become slim and stay slim.

Create Optimal Conditions

In order for your dog to successfully lose weight, we believe the following points are a must:

1. Before beginning the diet, have your dog checked out by a veterinarian.
   Only then can you rule out that there is a disease behind the weight problems or that secondary diseases have already arisen as a result of being overweight.
2. Create a diet plan with realistic intermediate goals together with your veterinarian.
3. Put your dog on a veterinary reduction diet. This way you can be sure that your dog will lose weight in a healthy way and will not suffer from any nutrient deficiencies despite the diet. You can find more information about the special features of veterinary reduction diets in the article “Which dog food is best for my dog to lose weight?”

Of course, dogs whose owners have done it differently have also lost weight, but scientific research and practical experience have shown that the diet is most easily successful under these conditions and shows more lasting success (keyword yo-yo effect).

So if you’ve met these more technical requirements, you’re actually well on your way to becoming a lean dog. But the diet can still fail due to psychological factors that make you doubt the sense of the undertaking and weaken your will to persevere. After all, your dog won’t “see” why you suddenly change your behavior when it comes to food and vehemently demand his usual privileges.

So that you don’t get weak:

Invest Time in the Preparation Phase

If your dog is to lose weight, both you and your dog must discard habitual behaviors and replace them with new ones. This only works if you:

• become aware of what has gone wrong so far,
• take responsibility and
• Approach the diet with a positive attitude.

How could it get so thick?

There are many reasons for obesity in dogs and it is important that organic causes are ruled out by a veterinarian. If there is no underlying disease, however, it can be said: Obesity is very often caused by misunderstandings in the human-dog relationship because we dog owners try to strengthen the relationship with our four-legged friend through food. We use treats, for example, as a token of love or to calm our guilty conscience and so many extra calories come together every day…

In order not to fall further into these calorie traps, you should therefore familiarize yourself with the natural eating behavior of dogs and observe yourself carefully when you are dealing with your dog. Then, step by step, you can replace the “unhealthy” behaviors with alternatives.

A snack glass, for example, helps with problem analysis

The knowledge becomes even more memorable when everyone involved in feeding is aware of the calorie bombs the snacks represent for your dog. For example, a dried pig’s ear has as many calories as a large chocolate bar and thus covers a fifth of the daily calorie requirement of a 25 kg dog.

A feeding diary can be just as useful as the snack glass, in which you enter everything your dog gets in terms of food, treats, chews, or table scraps for a few days. Such records are also very valuable for your veterinarian.

What makes you persevere until you succeed?

If you want your dog to lose weight in a healthy way, unfortunately, there is no shortcut that will lead to success overnight. As the owner of dog food, you have to find the motivation to push through the diet every day, no matter what.

You’re no different than an Olympic champion who spends years before his big moment of success practicing the same movements over and over again, even if he’s long since internalized them. You don’t win this competition with your weaker self with muscles, but with heart and will. Examples of powerful motivational aids include:

• To picture the goal in the most beautiful colors — over and over again. For example, you can imagine how wonderfully your four-legged friend can walk and play again when he is rid of his excess weight. Hang a youthful picture of your dog above the feeding bowl, showing him slim and fit while playing…
• To break down a big goal that seems far away into many small steps and to be happy about every small step forward.
• Do everything to ensure that the word “diet” triggers only positive feelings in you. When they think of “diet”, most people immediately have negative images of hunger, sacrifice, and hardship in their heads. This automatically develops the fear of failure and a certain feeling of helplessness. Owners of overweight dogs also often have to deal with feelings of guilt. However, the more you consciously think about the benefits of the diet for your dog and yourself, the less powerful these negative associations will be and the greater your chance of success.