>This reminds of me calorie tracking: you cannot perfectly capture the number of calories or macronutrients, but measuring does seem to help people loose weight.

This probably would explain the success of many fad diets if it were the increased awareness of the eating having an effect beyond the decision making about what to eat.

Totally - something I've been thinking a lot about... I got pulled into these diets at one point in my life - I remember doing atkins, then went full vegan for a while, then went only meat lol

The diets were meh. But the cool thing was that I learnt so much about food in general! I honestly didn't know much about food growing up. I feel like I still don't know that much, but I know the basics, and i'm not afraid of digging into some of the details.