Is the Atkins Diet a High-Fat Diet?

Dr. Atkins Had Something Very Different
to Say about Fat than you Ordinarily Hear

Drop into any low-carb forum or egroup and you'll soon hear the Atkins Diet described as being a high-fat diet. But the truth of that description depends on who you ask, and who you want to believe.

Those who are entering the diet for the first time do find a great metabolic advantage, initially, while the body discovers and learns how to use an alternative metabolic pathway it hasn't used before.

In the process, it does exactly what Dr. Atkins claimed:

Sneaks calories out of the body through incompletely burned ketones, a by-product of the breakdown of triglyceride into fatty acids and glycerol in the liver.

Hence, Dr. Atkins advice in the 2002 version of the diet while introducing the dieter to the initial phase of Induction was that:

"Liberal amounts of fats and oils are permitted."

However, eventually the body learns to use this alternative pathway to best advantage and begins conserving energy.

At that point, the state of being keto-adapted contains little to no metabolic advantage over any other diet. Keto-adaption simply means the body prefers to burn fatty acids, but preference doesn't mean "high." 

And neither does "liberal."

If following the Atkins program, as written, most dieters would be part-way up the carb ladder by that time, and would have learned how to make more healthy food choices, learned their own carb tolerance level for losing body fat, and would be consuming less dietary fat than they were initially.

However, the honest truth is this:

Few dieters do the Atkins plan by the book.

Which is why there is so much misinformation circulating among the low-carb diet groups these days.

Here's What Dr. Atkins had to Say About Fat!

If you listen to what the greater majority of individuals say on these egroups, you'd easily be led to believe that the Atkins Diet is a high-fat diet, must be a high-fat diet, in fact, because fat is the miracle nutrient that makes it work.

Having trouble sticking with the diet?

Add more fat.

Stalled for a few weeks?

Add more fat.

Can't get rid of sugar and carbohydrate cravings?

Add more fat.

No matter what the problem is, the answer is always to add more fat.

I've had a knee-jerk reaction to that line of thinking for a long time now; partly, because I personally have not found that advice to be very helpful.

But also because I knew I'd seen a quote from Dr. Atkins himself proclaiming his diet was not a high-fat diet.

Well, I ran into that quote a couple of days ago, in a book published in 1981:

"Dr. Atkins' Nutrition Breakthrough: How to Treat Your Medical Condition Without Drugs."

I thought I'd share it with you today, because it flat-out contradicts what the greater majority of low-carb folks believe about low carb today, including the Keto influencers.

Considering this quote comes from a time when the Atkins Diet was not new any more, it's particularly enlightening:

"Those of you who read my first book, Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution, know what diet to follow -- there was only one. Millions of dieters simply called it the Atkins Diet. It was a very low carbohydrate reducing diet (not a high-fat diet, as many of my nonreading critics asserted)."

Now, consider that this was said in 1981 when the original form of the Atkins' Diet was all there was:

• meat and eggs
• 2 cups (per day) of loosely packed salad (made with various forms of lettuce, cucumber, celery, and radishes only)
• dressed with oil and vinegar
• 4-ounces of hard yellow cheese
• 4 teaspoons heavy cream per day
• diet gelatin
• powdered or regular mustard
• worcestershire sauce
• soy sauce
• the juice of 1 lemon
• herbs and spices with no sugar
• and sugar substitutes of the day

No catsup and no tomato products allowed. No cream cheese on Induction. And no sausage.

While 1/2 cup vegetables (including tomatoes), cottage cheese, nuts, and berries were later added depending upon the dieter's tolerance for carbs and personal taste for low-carb foods, the original Atkins Induction was a severely limited diet.

A pat of butter was allowed on top of your steak, or some mayonnaise mixed into chicken or tuna salad or smeared on top of salmon, and a little oil was allowed to saute or be mixed with vinegar to dress the salad -- but that's about all the extra fats there were.

This design was intentional.

Atkins is a Moderate-Fat Diet

A reasonably lean piece of beef topped
with sauteed mushrooms

I can't say this often enough. According to Dr. Atkins:

"One of the big reasons why this diet works so successfully is because you eat protein and fat. And you eat them in just about the sixty to forty proportions in which they usually occur together in nature: in a reasonably lean cut of beef for example." (From Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution: The Famous Vogue Superdiet Explained in Full)

These quotes are nothing like what is preached within the low-carb ketogenic community today.

In fact, Dr. Atkins goes so far as to insinuate that if you're preaching the high-fat religion than you are a non-reading critic who is not doing Atkins correctly.

Although Atkins and Keto are both low-carb diets, Atkins is NOT Keto! These are two different low-carb approaches to health and longevity.

Folks read to eat protein and fat, to not be afraid of fat, then stop reading (or listening) before they get to the part that describes how they are supposed to do this:

By eating reasonably lean cuts of beef, and consuming protein and fat (60 to 40 percent) in the proportion it is found in nature.

As originally written, the Atkins' Diet was not a high-fat diet, nor was it ever intended to be such. At best, you could call it a moderate-fat diet because a reasonably lean piece of beef is not 60 percent fat.

It's 40 percent fat!

Most people flip the proportions around the wrong way!

Low-carb products and high-fat, homemade low-carb recipes and treats are modern-day inventions and additions to the moderate-fat diet Dr. Atkins personally used with his overweight clients.

Dr. Atkins considered these types of recipes to be occasional indulgences and not for every day meals. They are on-plan splurges for special occasions, so you don't have to go off plan to celebrate or socialize.

And this included the recipes that he includes in his books.

All of his recipes are low to moderate in fats. You can see that by taking a good look at the recipes he included in his books. None of those recipes have ever been high in fat.

Granted, fats help with blood sugar control, allow a bit more variety to the diet, and help to keep dieting from being such a hardship. That's true.

It's also true that the typical Atkins Induction diet is about 65 percent fat. But this is for Induction when you are given permission to eat very liberally to help you have an easy time getting into dietary ketosis.

Fats make a diet livable and contribute essential fatty acids necessary for normal cell function. They are also important when you begin to move into the pre-maintenance and maintenance phases.

However, they were never intended to be abused to the extent that many Atkins dieters are abusing them today. They were originally intended to be a helpmeet, a luxury to make the diet more palatable, but not a diet mainstay.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that once a dieter becomes ketone adapted, all of the calories in the diet matters, especially fat calories, because their non-carb status causes them to be overlooked.

So if you're struggling with your current Atkins weight-loss plan, take a little advice from Dr. Atkins and look at your fat consumption.

Are you eating protein and fat in the same proportions as found in nature?

Or . . .

Are you eating fats mostly in low-carb products and high-fat recipes?

You just might be surprised to find out that you're eating far more calories than you think.