What you need, is to speak with Holly.
HOLLY???!!
She'll guide you in the right direction regarding food. She helped me a lot when I was agonizing over what type of food for Sierra. In the meantime, I'll see if I can locate some food threads that may be of help. I keep certain ones I want to refer back to in a file at home, but I'm at work right now.
I honestly don't know about the free feeding. I got Sierra at 10 weeks and tried to get her on schedule, mostly to help with the housebreaking, but she always just kind of ate when she wanted to. We ended up free feeding, and even now at 15 months, she only eats when she wants to. There are some days when she won't touch her food and other days when she'll scarf down everything in site. I keep an eye on her, but so far it seems to be working for her. She's nice and lean, maybe only about 90 lbs or so. I asked the vet about it and she said Sierra is in excellent shape and has a nice healthy waistline. She said she wouldn't worry about it and to just keep an eye for a change in her eating habits. I guess sometimes it just depends on the dog.
I know that probably doesn't really help you much, but just sharing my experience...