The Atkins diet is really called the Atkins nutritional approach. It’s a low-carb diet created by Robert Atkins. He had gained a lot of weight in medical school. A medical Journal had an article about a diet. He built on that diet and eventually made it popular.

Dr. Atkins had rather radical theories about the nature of weight gain as expressed in the Atkins diet. He held that saturated fats weren’t as bad as people claim. Carbohydrates, found in potatoes, and breads, were the real problem. In Atkins theory eating too little fat make things even worse. He pointed to all the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates. That meant people on a diet often ate foods that were worse than they normally ate.