Fat Atkins?

February 10, 2004, 5:13 PM EST


It turns out that Mayor Mike's gut instinct about Dr. Robert Atkins may have been right after all.

Bloomberg, who called the dead diet guru "fat" in January, was partly vindicated Tuesday when an autopsy report listing Atkins' post-mortem weight at a hefty 258 lbs. appeared in the Wall St. Journal. The doctor was about 6 feet tall, making him technically obese.

News of the report came as Bloomberg revealed that Atkins' widow Veronica backed out of a steak dinner the mayor arranged to make up for his salty comments, made during a visit to a Brooklyn firehouse.

"I did have something arranged and she had to cancel for family reasons," Bloomberg told reporters at a Lower Manhattan press conference yesterday. "I don't know what people want to do after that. I think that was an event we should move on from here."

An Atkins spokeswoman didn't respond to questions about the cancellation.

Atkins, who parlayed his controversial high-protein, low-carb diet into a lucrative global empire, died last April after slipping on a midtown sidewalk.

The Medical Examiner's office is conducting a probe into how the post-mortem report was given to an anti-Atkins physicians' group.

"Apparently the document was released because somebody, inappropriately, with false information, applied to get it released," Bloomberg told reporters. "There's absolutely no circumstances that private medical documents should be put out."

Veronica Atkins disputed the obesity findings, calling the report's leak "nothing more than an attempt to tarnish the reputation of a man who dedicated his life to solving one of medicines greatest challenges - the obesity epidemic."

Dr. Robert Trager, chief of the Atkins' Physicians Council, went even further, saying the doctor's heft came from fluid retained during nearly two weeks he spent in a coma after slipping on a midtown sidewalk.

"During his coma, as he deteriorated and his major organs failed, fluid retention and bloating dramatically distorted his body and left him at 258 pounds at the time of his death, a documented weight gain of over 60 pounds," Trager wrote in a statement.

The doctor's normal weight, Trager claimed, ranged between 180 and 195 lbs.

That contradicts Bloomberg's earlier description of the diet guru's girth, which he observed during a fundraiser at Atkins' house on Long Island two years ago.

"The guy was fat," Bloomberg said at the firehouse last month. "Big guy, but heavy."

Trager's fluid retention explanation was also questioned by former city medical examiner Dr. Michael Baden, who said that patients -- even those given too much intravenous fluid while they were unconscious -- seldom gain more than five or 10 pounds.

"You simply can't gain 60 lbs. in that way," said Baden, now forensics director for the New York State Police. "If somebody gained that much weight from an I.V. it would be gross, gross malpractice. I've never seen it happen."