But wouldn't it be much easier to just remove all the crap from your diet (soda, candy/chips, processed food, ...) and exercise every once in a while rather than monitoring your carb intake every day?
No, because bread and pasta are also "crap" when it comes to simple carbs.
True, but bread and pasta have been around for a lot longer than the obesity problem. What's changed over the last however many years is that people stopped cooking their own food, stopped moving, replaced water with soda and so on.
Yeah - but when you look at most people's diet, it mostly consists of all that crap. Even the "healthy" stuff (think Naked juice, etc) is packed with sugar & simple carbs.
Why not just remove all the carbs from your diet and exercise every once in a while instead of monitoring your crap (pork rinds, slim jims, bacon, etc) intake every day :P