Simply put, dog diet charts are non-sense. Also known as dog feeding charts, it's a simplistic chart that shows portioning according to weight. You can often find it on the back of a dog food bag. The advantage is that its really easy to read and get a close to the right number - that disadvantage is that its not accurate. While accuracy may not be important for some folks, in a weight loss application, precision is key.
The basic failure is the assumption that weight <> portion are two variables with 100% correlation. That's simply not true.
For example, if your dog is neutered or spayed, that has a negative impact on their calorie requirement. And even that categorical variable is weighted differently depending on whether the dog is male or female, and large or small breed.
Let's not forget the activity level of the dog. Isn't it obvious that a super active dog has a higher resting energy requirement?
The simple, precise way to calculate and understand how much to feed your dog is by using a feeding calculator (one that uses, Weight, BCS, Sex, Neutered Status, Activity Level, Body Size, Breed)
This is especially important when you're thinking about how to help your dog lose weight, and designing a weight loss program for dogs. So please don't use a dog feeding chart for weight loss.
Our feeding calculators are the best in the field, and we have one designed around weight loss - we call it our weight loss quiz.
