I always believed this is where the fork in the road lies for most people who are pursuing weight loss/gain goals. You fall into one of two categories.

Person A - Willing to go the extra step to understand these basic principles and apply them to their plan.

Person B - See's this part of the journey as too complicated or too much added work on top of everything else.

The simple truth is Person A is far more likely to be successful reaching their goals while Person B has now sabotaged a very important aspect of their nutrition plan. In those moments I promote the technology and apps out there that make it very easy these days for anyone to monitor their caloric intake/expenditure more closely.