The argument I am making is quite literally "tracking by using the labeling isn't tracking", but not for the reasons you're stating.
What I'm saying is that if you eat a serving of something, the package says x calories per package (and x servings per package, for those packages that are clearly one serving but say 2), and you write down all of those values you ate, and you arrive at a number... that number is entirely fictional.
When I say I ate around 2000 calories a day on the SAD (standard American diet), I have no clue. That is the problem with processed food, you have to trust the numbers on the box are correct because you have no clue what the recipe is, if the food could even be expressible in terms of normal ingredients.
Once you cook everything yourself, which also came with the diet change (because everything is contaminated with grains, refined sugars, and just weird strange shit), which makes it much easier to track calories (as USDA values for generic foods seem to actually be in the realm of reality).
And I'm saying there are likely things you missed. Because while it's never going to be 100% accurate, even for values from the USDA for 'generic foods', it won't be wrong to the tune of 75%. And that's what you're saying. That on average, the values are 75% more than what they're reported.
I didn't say a diet that isn't calorie dense. I implied foods. As a lot of the "named" diets happen to cut out the foods that are denser in calories.
I also didn't say impossible. I said difficult. Most people aren't going to try and cram 130 cucumbers in a single daily meal.
And by tracking it "using the labeling on the package" isn't really tracking. That's just looking. And not everything has labeling or packaging.
I've always had success when I'm honest with myself and I ruthlessly record every single source of calories that I ingest.