11 Best Diet Dog Foods for Weight Loss – 2023 Reviews & Top Picks

It happens to even the most well-intentioned of pet owners: you look down one day and realize your dog has gotten fat.

Or, more likely, your vet tells you your dog has gotten fat, and instructs you to help him lose a few pounds.  Regardless of the reason why, if you’re trying to convince your dog to shed some weight, it makes sense to switch him to a weight-loss dog food.

That’s easier said than done, though. It seems like you have to be an expert in canine nutrition to decipher food labels and determine which one is best for your pooch. That’s why we did the work for you, digging through several of the top weight-loss formulas on the market to find our favorites.

In the reviews below, we’ll show you which ones will help your dog start looking lean and trim again — and which ones will only lighten your wallet. Here are the best dog foods for weight loss:

A Quick Comparison of Our Favorites in 2023

The 11 Best Dog Foods for Weight Loss

1. Merrick Healthy Weight Dry Dog Food – Best Overall

You won’t find any cheap fillers or animal by-products in a bag of Merrick Healthy Weight. This food uses only all-natural ingredients, which should limit the number of empty calories your dog consumes.

There’s quite a bit of protein in this kibble (32%), and that’s borne out by looking at the ingredients list. Deboned beef is the first ingredient, but it’s far from the only animal source in here. You’ll also find chicken meal, turkey meal, and chicken fat; there’s a bit more plant protein than we’d like, but that’s a minor quibble at best.

Those meals are especially important, as they’re full of glucosamine for joint support, which pudgy dogs need. It’s also loaded with probiotics to keep your mutt’s digestive system in line.

The fruits and veggies are fantastic as well. Sweet potatoes, apples, and blueberries are all packed with important vitamins and minerals, and your dog should love them.

Merrick Healthy Weight isn’t a perfect dog food, but it’s extremely high-quality nonetheless. It should be great for dogs of any weight, and it’s a clear choice for our #1 spot.

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2. NUTRO Wholesome Healthy Weight Dry Dog Food – Best Value

NUTRO Wholesome Essentials certainly lives up to its name, as it only uses wholesome ingredients. These include chicken, lentils, and sweet potatoes, all of which should help your pooch perform at his best.

In addition to lean chicken, it also has chicken and lamb meal, both of which are full of important amino acids. There’s chicken fat for glucosamine, too.

There’s lots of rice and barley inside, each of which contributes complex carbs while also being gentle on the stomach.

The overall nutrient levels aren’t anything to write home about, but that’s to be expected in a weight-control formula. We also wish they’d used a little less salt.

At least you won’t be paying through the nose for it, though, as it’s the best dog food for weight loss for the money, in our opinion. So, if money’s getting as tight as your dog’s pants, this weight control formula should be one of the first you consider.

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3. The Farmer’s Dog Fresh Dog Food Subscription – Premium Choice

The Farmer’s Dog is the premium choice dog food when it comes to weight loss. If your dog needs to shed some pounds, calorie intake is what counts, and The Farmer Dogs recipes are vet-designed diet plans, tailored to suit canine needs. Every recipe is made fresh and with human-grade ingredients.

Each recipe is made up of at least 50% whole muscle and organ meat, which can include beef, turkey, chicken, pork, and beef and chicken liver. The meat is gently cooked, making it more digestible, and it’s is full of vital amino acids that are easily absorbed. Vegetables included in these recipes provide vitamins and minerals, fiber, and hydration, while ingredients like legumes, lentils, and chickpeas maintain a healthy digestive system and gut. All recipes are enriched with nutritional supplementation like fish oil for a complete and balanced meal.

The Farmer’s Dog is made with zero preservatives and no label tricks!

Log onto The Farmers Dog website, input your pets’ details, and your dog’s customized food will be prepacked, pre-portioned, and delivered within days!

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4. Earthborn Holistic Natural Dog Food

Earthborn Holistic is as notable for what’s not in it as it is for what they actually included. It doesn’t have any grains or potatoes, so it should be gentle for even the most sensitive of dispositions.

In lieu of cheap grains, it relies on tapioca and peas for most of its carbs. That also gives your dog some decent fiber, so he shouldn’t have any issues staying regular.

The first ingredient is chicken meal, which means your dog should get quite a few important vitamins, but we’d like to see lean chicken in here as well, especially at this price. The overall protein level is only average, at 25%, but at least it uses clean ingredients to get there.

It’s the fruits and veggies that make this food stand out. You’ll find blueberries, cranberries, apples, carrots, spinach, and more. We also like the inclusion of taurine, which is important for heart health, and larger dogs need to keep their tickers in prime working condition.

We’d be tempted to move this food up a space or two if it weren’t so expensive, but even so, this is a high-quality kibble that should help your dog shed excess weight.

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5. Blue Buffalo Wilderness Healthy Weight Dog Food

We’re not always big fans of Blue Buffalo, but their Wilderness line is fantastic, and this food is no exception.

It’s absolutely packed with protein at 30%, and most of that comes from chicken and chicken meal, the first two ingredients. There’s also quite a bit of pea protein, though, which isn’t ideal.

All of that protein makes this food irresistible to many dogs, too. If you’ve struggled to get your pup to eat a low-calorie food, then this is definitely worth a try.

Other than the pea protein, there’s not a lot to dislike on the ingredients list. It has fish meal and flaxseed for omega fatty acids, chicory root for fiber, and a variety of probiotics for digestive support.

It does have potatoes in it, which can give some dogs gas. That’s not a huge deal, but given that they don’t offer much in the way of nutrition, we’d prefer if they’d been left on the cutting room floor.

You won’t find many foods that have more protein than Blue Buffalo Wilderness, which is why it earns one of the highest rankings on this list.

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6.  Wellness 89118 Complete Health Dog Food

The first three ingredients in Wellness Complete Health are all proteins of some kind, including turkey, chicken meal, and salmon meal. The overall protein levels are on the higher end of average, so your dog should get plenty of muscle-building nutrients.

It should be gentle on your pooch’s stomach, too, as it uses oats and rice for its primary carbs. We also like the addition of salmon oil and flaxseed, both of which should add important omega fatty acids.

This food is designed for smaller pups (well, it’s designed for smaller pups who are starting to get large, but we digress). As a result, the kibble is very small and easy for toy breeds to chew.

That salmon oil gives this food a strong odor, though, so hold your nose as you scoop out your dog’s breakfast. The bag could use some sort of zip closure as well, as it can go bad quickly if you don’t seal it properly.

Wellness Complete Health is one of the best small-breed weight-loss foods out there, but it’s hard to justify ranking it in the top four when it’s relatively limited in scope.

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7. Natural Balance 42007 Dry Dog Food

Don’t let your dog see the bag of Natural Balance when you bring it in the house, as it has “Fat Dogs” written in big letters on the front.

If he can get past his hurt feelings, though, he should appreciate what he finds in this kibble. It uses a mix of chicken and salmon meal to give your dog the protein he needs, while also giving him plenty of important omega fatty acids. There’s also salmon oil in it to help with those omegas.

You won’t find any corn or wheat in it, either, as it uses garbanzo beans, peas, and barley instead. We also like the fiber levels, which are elevated due to pea fiber and dried beet pulp.

There’s very little fat in here, which sounds like a good thing, except it will likely keep your dog from feeling full between meals. That could lead to more begging, which translates to more snacking if your pup has a weak-willed owner.

It uses a fair amount of plant protein as well, which doesn’t have the same nutrients your dog would get from animal sources. That’s disappointing, especially given that this food is on the pricier end of the spectrum.

Overall, Natural Balance is a good food, but it simply doesn’t excel in any one area, which is why it doesn’t deserve to be ranked any higher than the middle of this list.

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8. Purina Pro Plan SAVOR Weight Control Dry Dog Food

Purina Pro Plan SAVOR has bits of tender, shredded meat mixed in with the kibble, so your pooch may not even realize he’s been put on a diet. This is definitely one of the tastier weight-control formulas.

Chicken is the first ingredient listed, ensuring that the food is built on a solid foundation of protein. It has a decent amount of protein overall (26%), as well as average amounts of fat and fiber.

However, after the chicken you’ll find a variety of disreputable ingredients. These include corn, soy, and wheat, all of which are difficult for many dogs to digest. Not only that, but they’re full of empty calories, which makes their inclusion in a weight-control formula strange, to say the least.

We also don’t like the use of animal by-products. This shouldn’t necessarily affect your dog’s ability to lose weight, but feeding him low-grade meat is generally a bad idea.

We do appreciate the inclusion of fish meal, as this packs in some necessary omega fatty acids, but it’s counterbalanced by the high sodium levels, which can encourage water retention and sabotage your mutt’s diet.

Your dog will almost certainly thank you for feeding him Purina Pro Plan SAVOR, but his vet may not be as forgiving.

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9. Solid Gold Holistic Weight Control Dog Food

Solid Gold Holistic takes the grain-free idea one step further by eliminating gluten altogether, making it ideal for dogs with allergies. Unfortunately, though, the rest of the food can’t quite live up to those elevated standards.

We do like the kibble itself, which is made of puffed squares rather than boring old round chunks. This makes it interesting for your dog to crunch while also ensuring that it’s filling and satisfying.

The first two ingredients are chicken and chicken meal, but that could potentially be misleading, as peas make up three of the following entries. That indicates the company uses a process called “ingredient splitting,” in which they take a single ingredient and list it in a variety of ways to disguise how much is in the food.

There’s a lot of salt in here, and the potatoes and dried eggs could cause some digestive issues. The fat levels are extremely low as well, which is disappointing.

Overall, Solid Gold Holistic is a decent food that could have been great, but as presently constituted is only worthy of the #8 spot on this list.

• Related Read: 10 Homemade Weight Loss Dog Food Recipes (Vet-Approved)

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10. Whole Earth Farms Weight Control Dry Dog Food

Whole Earth Farms is a premium-priced food that nevertheless seems to use cost-control techniques while making their kibble.

The first ingredient is chicken meal instead of lean chicken. That gives important amino acids, but it limits the amount of protein inside. After that, you’ll find potatoes, which offer little in the way of nutrition, followed by several other carb sources.

We do like the inclusion of chicken liver, which has nutrients not found in leaner cuts of poultry. It’s followed closely by salt, though, which can sabotage weight loss efforts and isn’t good for diabetic dogs.

Ultimately, it appears this food is better for weight control than weight loss, so it’s not ideal for pups that are trying to shed pounds. If you follow the serving directions, though, you should hopefully be able to arrest any weight gain, but at this price, you’d expect the food to do more.

Whole Earth Farms is a good enough food on its own, but if you start considering the value you get for what you pay, it begins to drag the overall rating down a bit — especially if you’re hoping to trim up Fido’s waistline.

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11. Iams 10171570 Proactive Health Dry Dog Food

You don’t have to wait long to find an issue with Iams Proactive Health, as the first ingredient is whole grain corn. Corn can cause issues with dogs that have sensitive stomachs, and it’s full of empty calories, which will likely sabotage your pup’s diet.

The primary protein source is chicken by-product meal, which means it uses all the meat that’s left over after better dog foods have bought all the good stuff. That helps make this stuff cheap, but you get what you pay for.

There are other ingredients in here we don’t like, such as egg product and artificial colors, so this food could be a nightmare for allergic pups. All of the beneficial ingredients are relegated to the bottom of the ingredients list, so there’s no telling how much they actually used.

If money is your only criteria, then Iams Proactive Health won’t put much of a dent in your wallet. It won’t put much of a dent in the scale, either, so we can’t really recommend it to aid your dog’s weight loss efforts.

Conclusion: How to Select the Best Weight Loss Dog Food

If it’s time to put your pup on a diet, we recommend feeding Merrick Healthy Weight. It’s high in protein, as it uses a wide variety of animal sources, while also including several high-quality fruits and veggies.

For a food that’s nearly as good and also less expensive, consider NUTRO Wholesome Essentials. It’s packed with glucosamine, which is excellent for joint health, while also offering a flavor dogs love. Our premium choice goes to him The Farmer’s Dog. for its human-grade, minimally processed, delicious meals.

Finding a suitable dog food is difficult under the best of circumstances, but it’s even harder when your dog’s health is on the line. We hope the reviews above have made it easier for you to come to a decision, so that your dog can lose any extra weight without feeling like he’s on a diet.

Of course, if all else fails, we bet some unscrupulous vet somewhere offers doggy liposuction.

See also: 10 Best Senior Dog Foods for Weight Loss – Reviews & Top Picks

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Featured Image: Barbara Danázs from Pixabay