One of the many benefits of feeding raw food is that the diet is lower in calories than commercial dry or wet dog food. Overweight pets will soon drop to their optimal weight after switching to a raw food diet because feeding a Biologically Appropriate Raw Food (BARF) diet resets an overweight pet's metabolism making their body absorb all the wonderful nutrients more efficiently.
It's important to note that if you choose to feed raw occasionally, then this process will take longer.
As with humans, the key to reducing your pet's weight would be feeding less and doing more exercise. Here's our advice:
For the first the week, feed your pet at 2% of their current body weight. We suggest this amount because we don't want to stress your pet when reducing their daily food intake
Following this, reduce down to 1.75% (you can go as low as 1.5%) to allow the weight to gradually reduce
Once you are happy with the reduction and your pet is at a healthy weight, re-weigh them and feed 2% of this new weight to stabilise and maintain
This may seem like a lot of figures and percentages, but stick with it and it will work!