The American nutritionist Robert Atkins came spectacularly to public notice in 1972 with his published claims for a revolutionary diet that guaranteed weight loss. What became known as the “Atkins Diet” was first published in his book Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution and swiftly became popular with America’s glitterati.

One of its great attractions was that it appeared to exact no painful privations from those who followed it. The Atkins diet was the very reverse of the gastric sackcloth and ashes that commonly attend a slimming regime. Far from taking to the boiled wholegrain rice, the low-fat yoghurt the sugar-free fruits and all the other tasteless accompaniments to the healthy regimen, America’s rich and beautiful were enjoined to carry on doing what they liked best — eating of the fat of the land.

Atkins’s novel solution to losing weight was that if the patient only gave up carbohydrates, they might guzzle as much protein as they liked. To him, carbohydrates — particularly refined carbohydrates — were at the core of the problem of obesity. Give them up and a human being could eat as much in the way of steaks, roasts, fried eggs and bacon, chops, cutlets, lobsters, oysters and the fatty fish as they wanted.

To Atkins, calorie intake was of itself unimportant. His remarkable proposition was that if a human being ate fat, but no carbohydrates, the body would start to burn off its own fat, thanks to a secretion he described as FMH — fat mobilising hormone.

Thus, the first fortnight of this punishing regime might feature a day’s intake along the lines of: breakfast — omelette with tomato, avocado and ham; lunch — grilled chicken with a Caesar salad; dinner — steak au poivre with roasted asparagus, followed by chocolate truffles. This might be followed later in the evening by a “snack” of cold cuts accompanied by radishes and celery with a Roquefort dressing — or a rich cheeseburger, if preferred. The mouth-watering prospect of literally eating oneself slim was, if the regime was to be believed, at last with us. Avoiding fat, according to Atkins, was the very cause of fatness itself.

Such a siren song was not long in recommending itself to the stars. In our own times Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts and Geri Halliwell have been reported to be aficionados, and Renée Zellwegger was famously supposed to have used it to slim down from the ratbag portliness required of her for the eponymous role in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

The first few days might admittedly, according to Atkins, be taxing ones. Such a severe reduction in carbohydrates put the body into a state of ketosis, a condition in which ketones — small carbon fragments — were thrown off in the breath and excreta (leading, in other words, to bad breath and strong, rank urine). But this was a sign that the body was beginning to lose weight by burning its own fat. Perseverance with the caviar and sour cream, crab mayonnaise, Lobster Thermidor and the Beef of Old England was all that was required. And Atkins pointed back to the pristine, happy and healthy state of our fat and protein-fuelled prehistoric ancestors as proof of his theories.

Naturally such radical proposals had their critics. The American Medical Association asserted that FMH did not exist and that Atkins’s diet was “unscientific and potentially dangerous to health”. The New York County Medical Society attacked Atkins’s book, while the Rush College of Medicine in Chicago claimed that ketosis could cause nausea, fatigue and low blood pressure in otherwise perfectly healthy people. In spite of these criticisms the Atkins diet continued to have its celebrity adherents.

Robert Atkins was born in 1930 and educated at the University of Michigan, where he graduated in 1951. He went on to Cornell Medical School, from where he took his degree in medicine in 1955, specialising thereafter in cardiology.

His interest in nutrition began in 1963. He was just 33 and, by his own admission, had three chins. Although not a naturally large-framed man he weighed, thanks to a diet of junk food, sweet rolls, doughnuts, potatoes and bread, more than 16 stone.

It was in the journal of the American Medical Association — which was later to attack him — that he read about the efficacy of a low-starch diet and determined to give it a go. He put himself on a diet he thought “I might just enjoy”, and began to consume “a lot of fish, shrimp, meat and duck”. To his delight the pounds began to fall off.

He next put 65 volunteers among his overweight patients on an early version of his low-carbohydrate diet, and saw them all reach their target weight painlessly. In 1972 his book announced this revolutionary dietary gospel to the world, and was soon selling in millions.

In the meantime, Atkins had founded the Atkins Centre for Complementary Medicine to offer patients his therapies. His company Atkins Nutritionals became a multimillion-dollar concern. The books continued to flow, such titles as Dr Atkins’ New Carbohydrate Gram Counter, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Cookbook, Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, and most recently, Atkins for Life, selling more than ten million copies between them.

However, Atkins faced several lawsuits from those who claimed that following his diet had damaged their health, in one instance causing a heart attack. And the apostle of the high-fat diet seemed somewhat to spoil the happy story when, in April 2002, he suffered a heart attack himself. The American Heart Association was quick to make a link between the Atkins diet and its proponent’s condition. Atkins remained unrepentant, claiming that he had not suffered a real heart attack, but a cardiac arrest related to a chronic infection of the heart.

Earlier this month he slipped on ice on a New York sidewalk, hit his head, suffered a brain haemorrhage and went into a coma from which he never recovered.

He is survived by his wife Veronica.

Dr Robert Atkins, nutritionist and author, was born in 1930. He died on April 17, 2003, aged 72.