It seems like calorie counting would be a good first-line treatment for difficulty controlling one's appetite. This requires a fair amount of discipline, but it's also free of side effects and tools already exist to help you. Do you think at least knowing A) what your basal metabolic rate is, and B) knowing how many calories you're eating (and consuming via exercise) is effective in combating this misfire in a body's signals?

I think a lot of the resistance to this is people are worried that the first-line treatment will be things like drugs, which can be expensive (to society, since costs are largely socialized even in the U.S. through the mechanism of health insurance) and have side effects. Look at, say, jrs235's comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5912203 ) elsewhere on this page. That's a valid concern. But obesity also comes with a lot of costs itself. If calorie counting is an effective approach, I think that it could address the problem in a cost-effective way. (And in a software way, too.)