Weight management in overweight companion animals requires a multi-modal approach combining dietary change, exercise, and behaviour modification to achieve and maintain healthy body condition.
Weight management welfare involves two distinct welfare considerations: the ongoing welfare cost of obesity in an overweight animal, and the welfare of the weight loss process itself. Chronic obesity imposes real suffering through joint pain, exercise intolerance, heat stress, and reduced lifespan. The weight loss process, if conducted too aggressively or using inappropriate methods, can cause its own welfare costs — nutritional deficiency, muscle loss, and in cats the specific risk of fasting-induced hepatic lipidosis. Veterinary-supervised weight loss programmes using formulated diets achieve safe, sustainable weight reduction with monitoring to prevent complications. Prevention through appropriate lifelong feeding remains superior to treating established obesity.