Agreed 100%. I think if your strategy for maintaining a good diet relies on weighing food and counting every last calorie, you are inevitably going to fail. Something more fundamental, natural, habit forming, whatever -- that will be the right answer. Naturally trim people don't count calories to stay that way, either.

Look at the modern world and tell me where natural is supposed to fit in though?

I work a desk job in a knowledge work based society with consistent, reliable caloric abundance.

The body doesn't know it's not on the African plains and needing to bank the current bounty because who knows when it'll eat next.

>Naturally trim people don't count calories to stay that way, either.

Wouldn't it be funny if we discovered that naturally trim people just produce more hormones like glp...

Of course naturally “trim” people don’t count calories - they don’t have to. Just like I don’t have to monitor my blood glucose level, but my Type 1 diabetic friend does.

You can’t apply to habits of one physiologic group to a different group and expect the same results.

So what do you suggest instead?

To be fair, 12 step programs would be a counter argument. The maintenance of homeostasis requires constant attention in those programs. You could say overeating is different from other addictions, and I would agree, but there are a lot of similarities too..

One might argue that homeostasis is, itself, a kind of attention that our bodies pay. Maybe by consciously changing our habits we can change our set points. In certainly way more aware of how full I actually am 3 weeks into hitting a 2000 calorie a day diet.

>I don't think it's natural

Natural is a fair part of your population starving every winter.