Despite your many reasons to discount the first experiment, their conclusion over six separate experiments is more or less the same as yours: "it's plausible that rituals can have useful effects on behavior" vs "Our body of evidence suggests that rituals can have beneficial consequences for self-control."

What evidence is there that people in this study might have been lying?

I think it's interesting that you completely dismiss calorie counting, which is the only long term strategy that I've seen work consistently for myself & others for weight loss. Why do you say it's wildly inaccurate? How inaccurate is wildly? How accurate does it need to be in order to work?