Most correct answer to this question is No. There are lots other tools that you can use to achieve your goals. For some purposes, those tools are sometimes not good enough, so calorie counting comes as a last resort.
Note: you have to take care of lots of other things first before you can have benefit from calorie counting.
Go read many other articles that talk against calorie counting, 1 and many more. Be familiar with all the points that people are making, nothing should surprise you.
Eat whole foods, rather than processed foods. Eliminate sugar, starch. And while you are at it eliminate food that has excessive simple carbohydrates. Look into low carb, keto etc. Eat sufficient protein, don’t be afraid of healthy fats.
Establish a fitness workout routine that you are doing consistently.
Fix your sleep and sleep 8 hours or more per night.
Understand that your calorie estimation is going to be wrong, and food labels are wrong, and preparation of food maters, which can result in different calories numbers.
Understand that your body might want to fight you if you are trying to lose weight too fast and might reduce your base metabolism, which results in overall reduction of your used up daily calories. Don’t let yourself feel stressed, weak, or depressed as a result of your diet. Look into intermittent fasting and low-carb if you are trying to lose weight.
Be fully aware of water weight that your body may add extra water depending on how much carbohydrates you are consuming. If making changes to your macronutrient ratio, be aware of this effect, and let some time pass for your body to stabilize.
Don’t rely on fitness trackers to tell you how much calories you burned, they are all wrong. Instead just keep your fitness levels consistent week-to-week.
Situation looks bad for calorie counting, what can you do?
Use calorie counting as a feedback mechanism. Track changes to your body weight week-to-week. Even though your calorie estimation is wrong, you are generally eating same type of food, therefore you can corelate how does your calorie values affect changes to your weight. (Your levels of: fitness, sleep, overall energy should remain constant.)
Your calories should not be compared with other people, but compared with your own numbers from previous weeks.
Energy (food) = Base metabolism + Activity + Change to body weight
In order to relate changes to your body weight with food, you must keep other things constant and eat similar food on a weekly basis. Beware of water weight retention, and beware of changes to your base metabolism.
My tracker is at: http://food.emira.ga/.
But why do you need it?
Most of the time you don’t need calorie counting if you are doing other things right (whole foods, resistance training, intermittent fasting, avoiding simple carbohydrates, or eating low-carb).
Two scenarios:
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if you are trying to shred down to very low body-fat percentage, more precision in your diet will help you.
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excess calories (more than your body needs per day) is used when adding muscle mass to your body, and in this scenario you want to be careful how much excess calories you are adding otherwise you’ll put on more fat than necessary.