@George,
Yeah, that's kind of my point too.
Sometimes people just plain eat too much and they need to cut down.
But once you're eating reasonably, it's sometimes more arduous to count calories et al than to eat more normally and get out there and exercise.
I much prefer to eat normally and exercise, since I enjoy exercising and it offers a lot of other benefits. And for me, calorie-counting becomes counter-productive -- if I don't think about food much, my diet is fine to excellent, but if I am dieting or thinking about it a lot,
that's when I start craving the verboten stuff.
Depends on what works best for the individual, within the general framework of burning more calories than you take in.