Accountability -- or, as I would term it, awareness -- is entirely why I have found tracking calories so helpful in my weight loss. If I'm not calorie-tracking, then I'm probably not going to bother measuring. Identifying a proper serving size and managing portion control are skills I'm going to have to practice for the rest of my life since for the first 30 years those issues weren't on my radar. I still gasp when I look up the nutrition information for chain restaurants and see meals I would once have ordered tallying 2000+ calories. Ouch.
But I think your point about our bodies not working on a 24-hour clock is well taken. Calorie counting will not in and of itself teach a person to eat intuitively. MFP scolds me if dip below 1200 (1150? Not good enough!) and tacitly shames me in the activity feed if I go over my daily limit, without taking into account how far over or under I might have been the previous day. I think a better assessment would be focused on weekly data.
But I think your point about our bodies not working on a 24-hour clock is well taken. Calorie counting will not in and of itself teach a person to eat intuitively. MFP scolds me if dip below 1200 (1150? Not good enough!) and tacitly shames me in the activity feed if I go over my daily limit, without taking into account how far over or under I might have been the previous day. I think a better assessment would be focused on weekly data.