This is a really great blog post. I've been doing something similar (but less rigorous) over the past two years. I was obese at the start and decided to get ba

This is a really great blog post. I've been doing something similar (but less rigorous) over the past two years. I was obese at the start and decided to get back to my college-age weight. I have now lost 70 pounds using "calories in / calories out" as the sole consideration. The challenge, as this blog post states, is knowing what calin and calout actually are. I have often wondered: how do healthy weight people seemingly know how much they should eat to maintain weight? Many people can maintain a weight without meticulous logging and data collection. They seem to know how to consume the appropriate portion sizes instinctively, without having to learn the actual numbers underneath it all. I have come to view the ability to know "how much should I eat?" as some combination of talent and skill. Some people seem to have much better intuition about this and need no training. Others, like myself, may live most of our lives without such intuition. Only through extensive data collection, observation, and analysis have I learned to approximate how much "calin" a meal will result in. I wonder: is there a way to teach this ability to children? Is this something that some people learn early in life, which they retain for a lifetime? Is this an avenue that researchers are exploring?