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I don't know what your credentials are but Dr. Atkins was a cardiologist by training. He explains it quite well in his books, particularly the "New Diet Revolution". He dares you to be "unashamedly unafraid of eating fat".

I'm a Ph.D. in Human Nutrition/Nutritional Biology doing my post-doc on a cardiology fellowship. Most physicians have relatively little education in human nutrition.

The bottom line is that without sufficient carbs, the body goes into a state of Ketosis (burning fat).

Ketosis is not fat oxidation. You're burning fat all the time. It's the primary energy substrate of resting muscles. Ketosis is a metabolic disorder marked by increased levels of ketones in the body tissues, blood, and urine. A ketogenic diet is a high-fat diet that maintains the body's starvation mechanism. The formation of so-called ketone bodies in the liver is the consequence, not the cause, of fat oxidation. The ketone bodies are transported to peripheral tissues where they are used as an energy source in the (relative) absence of glucose. This is important to the brain that has no other significant source of energy than glucose.

Without the carbs, to produce insulin which is the hormone repsonsible for storing energy in fat cells, your body quits storing fat.

Insulin is responsible for signaling the presence of high blood glucose so that (primarily) skeletal muscle cells, not fat cells, can take it up. Of course, a eucaloric diet that has little glucose will have less glucose and more fat used for energy simply because for a constant energy expenditure there is relatively more fat and less glucose available as substrate. This is just accounting.

More importantly it burns fat quickly. It not only burns it quickly, your body increases your metabolism to burn the fat that you have eaten. Eating more fat on a low carb diet actually revs your metabolism and burns more body fat than it would if you ate less.

Some highly trained athletes have shown a transient response to a high fat diet that resulted in increased synthesis of proteins involved in fat oxidation. In addition, there have been studies of lean young adult males with a relatively high fat diet (~44% energy from fat intake). They had a difference in resting metabolic rate from lean young males with a habitually low fat (~33% energy from fat intake) of about 11% (~170kcals, about the caloric value of a glazed donut). It doesn't follow, though, that an obese middle-aged individual will experience the same result on a low carbohydrate, high fat diet.

Go get his book, He explains it much better than I ever could. You can get it for $4 to $7 at most pharmacies and bookstores. And unlike a lot of his critics, he cites studies after studies.

Atkins used studies cynically. That is, he cited those that appeared to give credibility to his book. He and his proponents have ignored many, many more studies that seriously undermine his theory. The recent 1 year study published in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that Atkins diet resulted in a quicker weight loss during the first six months, but that at the end of the year there was no significant difference. On the other hand, a review of over 200 studies of different diets done by the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that those were least fat who ate the least fat.

It understand it goes against what the medical establishment has taught. But I know for a fact it works. And medical establishment has recently expressed shock at the results of 1 year studies of low carb diets vs low fat diets.

This is not true. See the comments immediately above.