I appreciate where you're coming from but have a different perspective.
Calorie counting isn't particularly hard once you get the hang of it. You find healthy things, put in your mouth, put them in the app, repeat until you are out of calories. Neither is working out for reasonable levels of fitness. You get a regimen, do it, repeat.
I have been eating whatever the past couple weeks while I've been doing certification training for 12-14 hours a day that will hopefully land me a $50k/year job after a 5 week unpaid externship, at 20 years old, after which I'm going to start putting myself through college on my way to veterinary school.
My boyfriend is overweight and just finished taking his COMLEX, which is an eight hour exam at the end of the second year of medical school, which he is putting himself through after putting himself through undergrad.
Both of us are going to get healthy soon but we've up until this point been so overwhelmed with other things - him with his boards studying, being a good son to his family, volunteering, being a good friend to his large social circle, me on figuring out how to move out of my parent's house, how to handle bizarre circumstances, doing hobbies (photography/music), etc - that remembering to start being cognizant of this new extra thing has slipped our minds.
Being healthy is great. Being unhealthy is bad. I am unhealthy and want to be healthy. When I become healthy I will be really proud of myself.
That said, I think using fitness as a barometer of discipline is overselling people who have it and underselling people who don't. If my boyfriend and I did get into excellent shape, I think "he eats a low calorie diet and goes to the gym" would be extremely far down on the list of things we do which impress the other.
To be caring, inspired, passionate, empathetic, open minded, open hearted, driven, focused, humble, confident.... Those are all things I see in him and those are all things that take a lot more than going on evening runs and subbing salads for Taco Bell.
For the second time. Being healthy is good. Unhealthy is bad. Blah blah. But I think there's much more to a person.