[bonoboTP]

A large part of the effectiveness in counting calories is that you pay more attention and make more conscious decisions and are less likely to "cheat" if you have to enter it in your food log.

It's indeed like astrology. Simply thinking about personality traits and thinking through your life and your desires and goals and current situation is already beneficial to take charge and navigate your life.

[smallmancontrov]

I'd take the opposite point of view: just thinking about life, desires, and goals is how people wind up paying $10 to Whole Foods for a slice of "healthy pizza" that is nutritionally identical to any other pizza but comes out of a cute stone oven and is displayed on a wooden platform next to green leafy plants. Vibes astrology is notoriously easy to exploit, both by your own sugar/salt/fat-seeking instincts and by unscrupulous commercial forces, let alone the two working together. The unique thing about calorie counting is that it cannot be exploited like vibes astrology. Not even with a 20% error margin, which is (probably not coincidentally) the caloric deficit targeted by standard dieting advice.

[ijk]

That's an interesting bit, where reducing friction too much can eliminate the side effect that is actually driving the desired results.

Do you want to count calories, or do you want to lose weight? Sounds like it's possible to hyper-optimize calorie counting to the point that it becomes counter-productive...