Keeping track of things

I've previously spoken about my severe dislike of calorie counting because it absolutely drives me nuts so I've experimented with other ways of keeping track of my food intake. Lately, I've just been writing down what I've been eating without focusing and stressing about how many calories I've ingested. I mean, I know the general calorie count, but I don't worry that I've eaten a handful of grapes without knowing exactly how many went into my mouth.

Overall, I've been trying to fix the two major problems I have with eating:

1. I like big portions and high-calorie foods.
2. I wing a lot of my meals and that results in eating out a lot.

To solve problem 1, I've been looking up recipes that have lower calorie counts

Problem 2 has been much harder to fix. I hate cooking. Let me rephrase, I hate cooking every day. Once in a while, I crave a home-cooked meal but that doesn't happen very often. I'd rather drive to get take-out than spend that time cooking on my own. Yeah, no bueno.

I don't know where this dislike of cooking stems from so it's hard for me to fix it. It's hard to buy exact ingredients for a given recipe, so I'm bound to have leftovers not only of the meal but of random other things like bunches of broccoli or part of a block of cheese. I'm not creative enough to throw all these things into some other dish so they usually go bad in the fridge because I don't think to just snack on a stalk of celery. And then I have to throw it out, which makes me less inclined to buy more things for the next recipe.

Also, when I'm seriously calorie counting, I have every calorie mapped out and having some leftover cheese or cream or an apple really throws off my plan. Although if you think about it, I could eat the apple instead of drinking the beer and I'd be better off. But that idea doesn't seem to come to mind at the time.

I'm also not a fan of leftovers (and by that I mean that they really gross me out) so I would have to cook practically every meal, and that's just not going to happen. So that leads to me cooking a few times a week and eating out the rest of the time, all of which throws off my desire to eat fewer calories with every meal. I end up being "good" some days, but the "bad" days greatly offset the good ones.

When I read over this post again, it sounds like a bunch of excuses. I need to...

1. Get over disliking leftovers.
2. Become unlazy and cook my damn food instead of driving to buy it.
3. Be accountable for what I put in my mouth.
4. Stay away from beer!