Will free-choice feeding make my cat overweight?

Most of the time. There are very few cats that can handle the open buffet at all times, but just like the rest of us, having food out in front of you all the time is a recipe for becoming overweight. So it's best to meal feed, not only to keep them at a healthy weight but also because meal feeding allows us to add enrichment to their diet as we chatted about before.

It depends on your cat. If you've got a chowhound of a cat who's always at the food bowl if there's food in it, then yes, free-feeding could lead to an overweight cat. Some cats are a bit better at regulating themselves so that you can leave food out, and they'll eat when they're hungry, and they won't eat when they’re not, and they maintain their weight pretty well that way. You just need to figure out what cat you have.

That definitely could, yes. Cats don't typically regulate their intake. Some cats do. I have clients who leave the food out all the time, and their kitties are beautiful and lean, but that's not the norm. Most cats will overeat. So if you have a grazer, meaning you've tried to meal-feed your kitty, which is the ideal way to feed, even if it's multiple small meals a day, and they're not going to eat that way, then you have to control the number of calories that you're leaving out. So you have to control the food. So you can leave a set amount out that you've measured out in the morning. And when it's gone, it's gone. Or you can divide that set amount into two times that you put out—however you want to do it. But the bottom line is you need to control the number of calories they have exposure to every day.

It's highly possible. You can free-choice feed, I don't have a problem with that, you just need to measure feed for each specific cat. It's hard to leave one bowl out for four cats because some will be thin and some won't.

Potentially. It just depends on the cat. Here is the problem. As we've already mentioned, dry cat foods are too high in carbohydrates, so they don't feel as satiated or as full. In many cases, but not all cases, they don't feel as full. They want to go back to the food bowl, and of course, they'll scream and scream, and we cave in and give them more food. That's not free feeding, but they train us to put more food into the bowl, which means they're getting a higher carbohydrate diet. Guess what? They're probably going to get too heavy over time.

Free-choice feeding is not recommended for most cats because they don't have the ability to determine how many calories they're getting over the day and over time will tend to gain weight. There's a study that shows if a cat eats just 10 extra kibbles in one day over a year, they will gain one pound of body weight. If you are free choice feeding, it's recommended to measure out their food. Half a cup for an adult cat is a good average to go by.