It is a strong argument and I know to many examples where this is just simply not the case.
I myself have been eating all my life big portions of food couple times a day, mainly with meat and potatoes, sometimes with some salad though a lot of times without any. I'm not a big fan of sweets, but I do eat bread and some other stuff containing carbs, simply because it is almost impossible to avoid it these days.
At the same time I'm developer spending most of my time in front of computer and I do not go to gym. It has been like this for the last decade, though in the last 5 years I have spent much more time in front of computer and much less doing anything else. Yet my eating habits hasn't changed, neither did my weight. Since I was 16 and my wight was always 90-95 kg, I'm >1.9m height. I believe that this case just proves that calories in vs calories out doesn't always apply. Otherwise by now I should be obese whereas nothing even remotely close has happened.