Read my other comments.
Eat real whole food.
Use a scale.
I guess my whole thing comes back to:
- You use a scale
- You see your weight go up
- You want you weight to go down or stay the same
- What do you do?
The answer is:
- You either consume less or you expend more
That’s CI/CO.
I do, and the weight number goes up and down based on how much.
It’s all of the above IMO.
Eating more whole foods, especially veggies and lean protein, makes eating fewer calories easier. If you’re STILL not losing weight…eat less of whatever you’re eating. Or move more. Or both. Or keep cutting out additional calorie dense foods from your diet.
Whole foods arent some magic key…but they make the process easier. Plus evidence strongly suggests they’re better for you than other stuff.
That’s calorie counting.
That’s not but ok.
With a scale you are measuring a (more) realible indicator of your diet.
Tracking number with very low reliability is useless.
All calories are not equals, evidences show how the body adsorb different amount of calories from different sources.
Your body do not adsorb the same calories from eating 100 kCal of Donuts or of Broccoli.
This means your calorie counting is failing. Your are always inputing 100kCal in your app, your are adsorbing who knows how much and you give the message that eating Donuts or Broccoli is the same once you are in a calory deficit you cannot be sure you are in.
You’re tracking something which is not true. Call that science.
Again, calories on labels are screwed. This means your calorie counting is failing.
Again, calories expenditure are incredibly screwed. This means your calorie counting is failing.
And finally again, this does not mean that in some circumstances CICO is not working as a support tool.
It needs a lot of nuances and experience to give valuable information. (I sometimes use it)
I repeat for the last time, as a general claim for broad audience there are better tools and change in lifestyle that have a greater impact to health and body weight and better way to track it.
Except, a scale does not measure diet.
A scale measures the end results of diet and activity.
If your weight is going up or static, and you want to lose, you have to eat less calories. Literally. That’s not something that is arguable, it’s just fact
There is a difference between something like “portion control” and “calorie counting”. The latter directly implies and essentially requires COUNTING CALORIES by definition, while the former can be done by pure eyeball, stomach & scale without any calorie counting.
I get your core point but acting like the two are inseparable (as in people must count the calories specifically) is a but much. Calories are the hidden factor here, but it’s entirely possible to control weight without looking at them in any way, shape or form. It’s what I have done for ages since I have never done anything remotely close to the CICO effort done my many others.
No, you literally can’t. You eyeballing the portions is just another way of estimating calories. That’s what you are doing when you eyeball regardless of if you are conceptualizing the specific numbers of calories.
Look, everyone should use the method that is most effective to them, 100%. But they are all just different ways of figuring how many calories you are absorbing against how many you are burning, and it’s important to recognize that.
Remember we are discussing CI/CO, not specific ways of figuring calories.
A scale also does not distinguish between weight and fat.
You can eat 2lbs of broccoli with dinner and wake up the next day heavier but not fatter. I know that when I take sodium bicarb before a training session that the next day my weight will be ~1lb higher.
Weight over time is a great measure, weight in isolation can be misleading.
Calories are terrible at determining whether or not you are going to gain or lose fat, because there is no differentiation in how the body utilizes each “calorie”, or what signaling they provide. Macros help some, but there is no differentiation within the spectrum of each macronutrient type. Then you have wide variation not only between foods within each of the food groups, but variation between individual foods based on how they were grown or raised, the nutrients they received, ripeness, etc. All of that can drastically change the entire picture of not only health but how your body functions. Just saying “It just comes down to CICO” is blatantly wrong.
But you agree, in the limit, it is a fact. yes?
As was previously expressed on this thread, CICO is 100% foolproof as a concept, but both the “calories in” (meaning calories that are available for fuel or storage) and “calories out” parts are near impossible to precisely track. Beyond that this has devolved into an argument about the sources of that imprecision.
Yeah the problem is, not a single ci/co person is saying that calories are a perfect metric. Nor are they advocating non-sensical 
like only eat fat or doritos. They are saying, even with imperfect knowledge of the details of all the substrata we can make decent predictions based upon the idea that energy in < energy out = weight loss.
And we can know that on one side of the fulcrum we can stack healthy diverse, whole, food that offers excellent nutritional density and on other side we can stack “exercise”. That better for you? And by modifying either end we can change the balance.
It’s like believing your actual fitness and recovery level is determined by TSS. =/
Are you trying to say that cico is not valid?
Oh boy 
I guess I should go read the whole thread more carefully next time.
Sure.
But entirely possible to track to a useful degree of accuracy to lose, maintain, or gain weight with intention?
Also, definitely yes.
Along with countless other athletes and coaches at the highest level in sport.