Interview With Robert Atkins - Part 1.

(From CNN News)

Byline: Kelli Arena

LARRY KING, HOST: Tonight, the late Dr. Robert Atkins in one of his last interviews before his sudden and shocking death. The world's most controvesial diet guru, Dr. Robert Atkins is next on LARRY KING LIVE. Good evening, I'm Larry King. Tonight, we're looking back at a fascinating hour we shared last year with the late Dr. Robert Atkins, the diet guru who died in April and his death has been the source of a recent controversy. The official cause of death if from head injury sustained after falling on an icy New York City sidewalk.

Recently released medical records have raised some questions, though. Was Atkins overweight at the time of his death? Did he have heart problems? And how were the confidential medical records released in the first place?

We'll hope to get some of the answers Monday when we have an exclusive interview with the doctor's widow, Veronica Atkins. But tonight, with his controvertial diet more popular than ever, here's Dr. Atkins, in his own words. KING: How in the world does a cardiologist in a world of we hate fat and high cholesterol, worry about all those things, suddenly turn the opposite route? How did that happen?

ATKINS: Well, it was really very simple. I needed to go on a diet back in 1963. I was gaining a lot of weight. Yes, I was practicing cardiology, but I was gaining weight. And there was an article in the AMA journal that said, by the way, you don't have to go on a low calorie diet, you can go on a low carbohydrate diet. And I thought, oh, how wonderful that is. So I went on a diet. It was very, very exciting. And I not only lost a lot of weight very easily, but I needed a lot less sleep. I used to need eight and a half hours sleep, and by the end of two months, I needed five and a half hours sleep, which, by the way, for the last 40 years, that's about all I needed.

So it really changed my energy level and it changed a lot of things. And so I decided to put other people on it.

KING: And the rest is history. Explain to me something... ATKINS: Yes, I'd say that.

KING: We need carbohydrates, do we not? We must have carbohydrates in our system.

ATKINS: A lot of people don't need carbohydrates.

KING: Don't need any?

ATKINS: Well, certainly the people way up in the northern Alaska where they don't grow carbohydrates manage to survive. So obviously you can survive without carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are valuable because of many of the things that they contain. So our diet really is not a zero carbohydrate diet.

KING: You take carbohydrates?

ATKINS: I eat a lot of vegetables. And those are the most valuable carbohydrates. But from the very beginning we had to focus on what are the healthy carbohydrates and stay away from the unhealthy ones.

KING: All right. Let's get the most important. What are some things you will not consume? What are unhealthy carbohydrates?

ATKINS: Well, basically, it's about refined carbohydrates. That's sugar and flour, those are the refined carbohydrates.

KING: That means you do not eat bread?

ATKINS: We now eat bread because we make bread without refined carbohydrates.

KING: Mean we -- you mean, you make your own bread?

ATKINS: A lot of companies make low carbohydrate bread now. Certainly we're one of them.

KING: So that's what you would recommend, low carbohydrate bread?

ATKINS: Yes. At various times. Now, we start off -- when people start the diet, we start off very strict. And a lot of people have felt, oh, that strict first two weeks of the diet, that's the whole diet. They don't realize that the diet is a 70-year diet.

KING: But you do allow...

ATKINS: And who cares about two weeks when you're on it for 70 years.

KING: You do allow steaks and chops and...

ATKINS: All of the main courses. Seafood, chicken... KING: Sauces?

ATKINS: Depends on the sauce. Depends on what…