Urgent Message to Those on Atkins Diet

His books continue to drive the eating habits of millions of people across the world who are desperate to find a reliable way of losing weight.

But Robert Atkins, pioneer of the controversial diet which bears his name, was clinically obese at the time of his death, a leaked medical report revealed yesterday.

Dr Atkins, who encouraged dieters to cut out carbohydrate in favour of protein, weighed in at 18 stone and four pounds when he slipped on an icy New York pavement last year.

Taking into account his height - 6ft - he would have scored 35 points under the calculation used across the world to define whether a person is fat.

A score of 25 would lead to a person being categorised as overweight. Over 30 is obese.

The report also revealed that Dr Atkins, who had followed his own diet for 39 years as well as inspiring celebrities including Brad Pitt and Geri Halliwell, had a history of heart problems.

Dr Atkins' widow, Veronica, was furious that the details of the report had surfaced, claiming "unscrupulous" opponents of her late husband's work were trying to undermine him and insisted his health problems were unrelated to his diet.

Following his death last April aged 72 after suffering a head injury in the fall, Dr Atkins' family objected to a full post mortem examination being carried out. However a medical examiner carried out an "external" examination and reviewed Dr Atkins' hospital records.

The details were revealed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

It had received them from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which champions a vegetarian diet and has been a vociferous critic of Dr Atkins' theories.

Extraordinarily, the PCRM had been sent the reports by a doctor from Nebraska who had simply requested them from the New York medical examiner's office. The office conceded yesterday that it had passed the details on by accident.

Mrs Atkins issued a statement in which she said: "I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health problems late in life were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet."

She said she was speaking out because otherwise "unscrupulous individuals will continue to twist and pervert the truth in an attempt to destroy the reputation and great work of my late husband."

A leading champion of Dr Atkins' theories, Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council in New York, said the doctor's heart problems were related to a disease of the heart muscle, called cardiomyopathy, which were not be linked to diet but which led to fluid retention and bloating.