[evantbyrne]

To be clear, I'm not against people medicating for severe cases. Calorie counting does work for billions of people alive today though. It works so well most people never even have to do any real measurements. You're either starting from a false premise by declaring that it "doesn't work" or using a very lax definition of what it means to try. I'm assuming the latter is what you mean, because that makes the most sense. The point I'm trying to make is you would be hard pressed to find someone who actually followed through with measuring their food intake honestly, cut 500+ calories out of it, and still managed to not lose weight over an extended period of time.

One of the reasons I referenced other countries was because it provides very strong evidence that culture is a factor. In America, we presently have a culture of telling ourselves that it's really hard to keep excessive amounts of weight off. We betray ourselves every time we tell that lie.