Tracking calories is fine. Some of us do, some don’t, and nobody criticizes. What we do criticize, however, is intentional calorie restriction.
The issue here is that, even in the absence of carbohydrate, the body behaves differently in times of calorie restriction from how it behaves in times of abundance. When calories are plentiful (and carbs are low, of course), the body increases the basal metabolic rate, fat cells not only release fatty acids for other cells to metabolize but metabolize them themselves, protein consumption doesn’t affect the glucagon/insulin ration, so all kinds of useful processes (including ketogenesis) can continue, muscles have abundant amino acids for growth, fertility increases, inflammation gets healed, bones are strengthened, insulin resistance gets reversed, and so forth.
By contrast, in lean times (still in the absence of carbohydrate), the body hunkers down and reduces the basal metabolic rate, slows or shuts down such non-essential processes as hair growth and reproductive ability, delays muscle growth, and retains every scrap of fat to get through the difficult period. It is very hard to eat less energy than you expend, when your body keeps lowering its energy expenditure to compensate, and it is possible to do permanent damage to the metabolism that way (think of the contestants on “The Biggest Loser”).
The other issue is that a low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet is more sustainable, because we can eat and not have to be hungry. Whereas the high insulin resulting from high carbohydrate intake blocks the body’s satiety signaling, which is one of the reasons fat people are hungry all the time—the news that they have plenty of stored energy is prevented from making it from their fat cells to their brain.
So if the human body is more likely to let go of its excess fat and heal its metabolism when calories are unrestricted than when they are deliberately kept low, which state do you think people on these forums are going to recommend? Especially when we are all about the science, and the science points in only one direction—and not in the direction of the government’s dietary guidelines, either!