Atkins maintains that as long as you are burning fat and not glucose, the fat you ingest will not harm you. However, you can eat too much of it and fail to lose weight. There is an assumption with Atkins that you will do two things in the course of your weight loss phase:

1. Begin almost immediately to eat less food; and keep reducing that food volume as you progress. This automatically limits the long term amount of fat that you ingest. Although you eat fats without literally counting the calories from them, you will be eating much less of them than when you first started the plan. Some of this takes place naturally, but some of it you must do yourself.

2. Begin to trade fat for carbohydrates as you approach pre-maintence and move into maintenance. You reduce the amount of fat you are eating as you add carbohydrates. This is clearly stated in his book.

Thus, the Atkins plan is not a long term "high fat" diet. It allows fats in "liberal" amounts in the long-term maintence phase, compared to a low fat diet; but you cannot gorge on fat, or anything else. Eventually we will be eating a diet very much like that of the classic French diet. And the key to that diet is small servings of food. I have already found that I have only a fraction of my previous appetite. I estimate that I am eating about 25% of the volume I ate on the low fat/high carb diet.

I also believe that the principle volume of fats should come in the form of olive oil, and the natural fats that are in the proteins we eat. Gorging on butter is not a good idea at any time. Using butter judiciously is a good idea. Eating too much beef fat is also not a good idea. But eating some beef certainly is.

Atkins takes the stance that fats are not automatically pejorative to long term health. We simply eat small amounts of food and include fats in our diet. The people who are so vociferously condemning fat out of hand seem to have their own dogmas that they are not willing to adjust to the facts. Remember that the principle in Atkins is that carbohydrates are the dangerous elements in our diet; not fats.

I hope this helps explain your husband's conundrum!

Good Luck