My husband finds it frustratingly hard to comprehend the low carb and losing weight way of eating.
I'm crazy from trying to answer a question he asks.
Here goes if anyone has an answer he may accept.

Can you eat as much fat as you want with low carbing and still lose weight? If you take in more fat than you burn, is that fat stored?

I keep telling him that if you are eating the correct amount of carbs, you will burn the fat. But he continues with wondering 'but what if you take in more than you burn?' He seems to be confused about the fact that you are eating high fat and not having to watch the amount.

Can anyone suggest a simple way to explain this.
He is a systems analyst so that may be why he can't comprehend the simplicity of it!

You can consume too many calories on this WOE and fat has lots of calories. This really isn't about being able to eat unlimited amounts of legal foods. Dr. Atkins addresses this in the book. Maybe your husband would be willing to read that part. My husband doesn't totally agree with this WOE either, but he has seen the results and is very supportive of my effort. Hope yours will be, too.

Cindy

In a way, you're both right. Low carbing doesn't limit fat because fat in and of itself is self-limiting. You can only eat so much of it before you start to feel queesy. If your DH doesn't think so, challenge him to sit down and eat a stick of butter. Bet he can't get through the whole thing.
OTOH...you can't consume far more calories, be it from fat or anything else, than you burn or you aren't going to lose weight.
When your body burns fat for energy instead of carbs, it's working harder to get energy which means that you can eat a bit more than you could on a low fat diet where you primary energy source is coming from carbs/glucose and still lose weight, but even that can be abused. You CAN consume too many calories and not lose weight even if you are staying within your correct carb level, but it doesn't happen often.
Dr. Atkins doesn't limit calories or fat, but makes a point of saying eat until you are satisfied but don't stuff yourself. The beauty of low carb is that for most people, it suppresses the appetite so you will naturally eat less. It also teaches you to listen to your hunger/satisfied signals. In some cases, that actually presents a problem because people begin eating too little and their bodies start shutting down the metabolism to compensate which can totally stall weight loss and promote loss of lean body mass such as muscle.
Most people on low carb don't need to count calories. A few will, either because they are eating too little or because they are eating too much. As long as you are satisfied with what you are eating and are losing weight, try not to worry about it.

Here it is, from the Atkins Center. There's another link at the bottom with more information.

If your DH, cant change his way of thinking about calories, just tell him it's an "act of God" and be done with it! It's just as good an explanation!

What Is the Metabolic Advantage?

Groundbreaking research more than 40 years ago first raised the suggestion that "a calorie is a calorie is a calorie" was not necessarily always the case.

One of the most talked about aspects of doing the Atkins Nutritional Approach™ is that most people can lose weight while eating the same number of calories they did when they were on an unsuccessful low-fat plan.

Two British researchers, Prof. Alan Kekwick and Dr. Gaston L.S. Pawan, did the groundbreaking research on the metabolic advantage. In the 1950s and ’60s the two were at the top echelon of British obesity research, both serving as chairmen of many international conferences. Kekwick was director of the Institute of Clinical Research and Experimental Medicine at London’s prestigious Middlesex Hospital, and Pawan was the senior research biochemist of that hospital’s medical unit. Their seminal experiments (first on mice and then on obese humans) provided the breakthrough concept—the mechanism and rationale—and the evidence that a controlled carbohydrate, high-fat diet has a metabolic advantage over so-called balanced or conventional low-fat diets.

In the early 1950s the two researchers were struck by the many studies that suggested that diets of different compositions of fat, protein and carbohydrate provided differing rates of weight loss. Their subsequent study on obese subjects found that those on a 1,000-calorie diet comprised of 90 percent protein—and especially those on a diet comprised of 90 percent fat—lost weight (0.6 pounds and 0.9 pounds per day, respectively). However, when the same subjects were given a diet with the same number of calories, but comprised of 90 percent carbohydrate, they did not lose any weight—in fact, they gained a little1.

Kekwick and Pawan then replicated a study with humans that they had previously done on animals and found the same phenomenon: A diet of 1,000 calories worked well for weight loss as long as carbohydrate intake was low, while a high-carbohydrate 1,000-calorie regimen took off very little weight2. They then showed that their subjects did not lose at all on a so-called balanced diet of 2,000 calories. But when their diet contained primarily fat and very little carbohydrate, these same obese subjects could lose weight—even when they ate as many as 2,600 calories a day. The difference is that weight loss between the two programs comes close to being a pound per day. Despite the Middlesex doctors’ impeccable reputations, the majority of their colleagues remained skeptical, given their calorie-is-a-calorie mind-set. They set out to disprove this intellectual bombshell that Kekwick and Pawan had dropped on them.

Among other things, critics claimed that the impressive results of a controlled carbohydrate weight-loss plan were merely water loss. However, Kekwick and Pawan conducted water-balance studies that showed water loss to be only a small part of the total weight lost. Kekwick and Pawan then embarked on a two-year study of mice in a metabolic chamber. By measuring the loss of carbon in the feces and urine, they were able to show that the mice on the high-fat diet excreted considerable unused calories in the form of ketone bodies, as well as citric, lactic and pyruvic acids. At the end of the study period, they analyzed the fat content of the animals’ bodies and found significantly less fat on the carcasses of the mice that had been fed a high-fat, controlled carbohydrate diet.

Perhaps the most provocative aspect of Kekwick and Pawan’s work: During the time they were proving the metabolic advantage of a controlled carbohydrate diet, they detected and extracted a substance from the urine of people on the regimen. When that substance was injected into mice, it caused the same metabolic results they had observed in the mice on controlled carbohydrate diets, indicating that fat was “melting” off their bodies. The carcass fat decreased dramatically, the ketone and free fatty-acid levels rose and, most significantly, the excretion of unused calories via urine and feces rose from a normal 10 percent to 36 percent. They named this substance FMS, or fat-mobilizing substance. For more recent research that supports the metabolic advantage, see Explorations Into the Metabolic Advantage.
Selected References
Kekwick, A., Pawan, G.L.S., "Calorie Intake in Relation to Body-Weight Changes in the Obese," The Lancet, July 28, 1956, pages 155-161.
Kekwick, A., Pawan, G.L.S., "Metabolic Study in Human Obesity With Isocaloric Diets High in Fat, Protein or Carbohydrate," Metabolism, 6, 1957, pages 447-460.

I'm sorry, what is DH you are referring to?

DH = dear husband (or substitute another D word depending on how you feel towards him at the moment. )

DH = dear husband.

If you go to "Low Carb Tips" on the orange bar at the top of the screen, you'll find more abbreviations explained (along with a lot of useful tips ).

Rosebud

Very cute and informative!
I am still fairly new, so I have not had time to explore every area of thei site.
Thanks for everyone's help!

my girlfriend thought it meant dumb head

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