[Andrea McCurry]

Jazz is an 8 year old lab with a long history of obesity. We reduced her food intake pretty drastically and she ended up losing about 15 pounds in about 3 weeks! What are the bad health repercussions of losing weight this quickly? I’m worried! I’m taking her to the vet tomorrow but can’t stop worrying….

[Hound Dog Mom]

I would say losing 15 pounds in 3 weeks is too much – I know for humans it’s not recommended to lose more than 3 lbs. per week (with 1 lb. per week usually being what people aim for). I’d have her seen by the vet for sure.

[pugmomsandy]

One of the rescue vets had mentioned 2 to 5% of body weight per month was good for weight loss. Not sure if that was for all breeds or not but I just foster pugs and a lot of them are fat.

[theBCnut]

That is for all breeds. When you lose weight too fast, you are losing muscle mass not fat, so you still have all the health problems associated with high body fat but are lacking muscle. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so by losing muscle mass you are slowing the metabolism even more. What you ideally want to see is an increase in exercise causing muscle building and then as a result you start seeing weight loss because more calories are being consumed and the exercise allows for fat burning instead of just glycogen stores being used. That’s why when people start an exercise regimen, they often gain weight at the very beginning.

[Andrea McCurry]

Thank you so much! Taking her to the vet today. Also, added back some food to her morning feeding, bringing her back up to about 25% less than her original intake. Hoping that will slow down the weight loss while adding back enough energy to exercise. This site is so good and so very helpful. I will recommend it to all my dog-loving friends!

[Hound Dog Mom]

I would reduce intake more than 10% to start. Give her a few weeks on a 10% reduction if there’s no weight loss reduce the intake another 10% until you start to see a steady weight loss of ~1 lb. per week. That’s what I’d do but you probably should speak to your vet as well.

[theBCnut]

I believe she meant she wouldn’t reduce intake by more than 10% to start with, and I completely agree.

[Author]

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