This is what I meant, exactly! People have this tendency to think "the plan" has more power than it does. By all means choose a plan, but if we are following it, with no cheats, and it's not working, it is a sign that perhaps this plan is not the right one for us.

I tried calorie counting for a couple of decades with no ability to maintain my losses. I did low fat/high exercise for almost ten years, with steadily decreasing returns. Atkins did wonders, and by "climbing the carb ladder" I learned what foods worked for me, and which foods worked against me.

Then I refined my efforts, with a Primal (Paleo with dairy) slant, and now using Dr. Fung's approaches to Intermittent Fasting to get rid of the weight I put on with a certain medication. But only because they work for me. There's been things other folks do that work great for them, and not for me.

There might be people out there who count calories and go to the gym and keep weight off for years that way. But this has a 95% failure rate. This is not a good plan for all those people