It looks increasingly like "counting calories" won't work as a weight loss strategy until I can have an AI automatically estimate my calorie input by watching e

It looks increasingly like "counting calories" won't work as a weight loss strategy until I can have an AI automatically estimate my calorie input by watching everything that I buy, cook, and eat, and compare that against its estimate of caloric expenditure via metabolism and physical activity. And even then, it would be easier to have a simpler AI that can do little more than recognize an item of junk food and shock the appetite out of me if it detects my hand reaching for it. Not everyone can do bomb calorimetry at home. It's rare enough that someone can measure food portions to the nearest 10 grams. I think the entire basis of the Weight Watchers "points" system is that the calorie number is just too much math for most people. And then, psychologically, it isn't a matter of "things I can eat versus things I can't eat" but "things I don't have to worry about eating versus things I have to track in a stupid notebook". That bypasses the stubborn counterreaction where forbidding a food only makes the dieter want it more. You can still have it, if you really want it, but you have to do math and accounting, so it had better be worth the hassle. This study mildly supports my buffet theory (actually a hypothesis). My theory is that you can avoid gaining excess weight at any buffet by following just one rule: you can eat anything you want, as long as every plate you bring back to the table is at least 50% filled with undressed/unsauced salad-bar vegetables, and you eat them first. It's hard to overeat when you're eating a half-plate of raw broccoli between each half-plate of other stuff. If you then replace the buffet with a grocery store, you have a lifestyle strategy: eat anything you want, as long as you have a proportional mass of salad first.