Consider cooking it, then you have something to eat.

I cook the food

I got a chest freezer for $200. I freeze everything before or on its expiration date.

Sometimes if its mushy veggies I make a stock and freeze it for the next meal. If its too far gone i have a compost jar in the kitchen and a bin outside.

I started a garden and an edible native hedge this year. I have tea herbs and squash for free now and working on a seed propagation.

I started a coop mushroom grow with my neighbors since he felled some hardwood and I had the plan. The leftover mushrooms we dont eat will be either sold at market or made into liquid cultures.

Were talking about going in on a local half cow or pig. He says if my garden keeps growing we can buy the plot behind us together and start a farm. Would cut grocery costs a lot.

My wife and I have pantry weeks where we dont go grocery shopping, we eat whats in reserve, soak dry beans, thaw last weeks on sale chicken breast and pressure Cook em, make a flatbread and have some curry.

Instant pot helps too. Thinking about getting coturnix quail to feed good scraps to and get eggs out of. I can plant cover crops for em on the last strip of lawn I have.

It doesn't have to be wasteful forever.

Be organized, have a weekly menu. I'm sorry this is the solution. My bad.

I sought an ADHD diagnosis.

Yeah ...

Strategies against this include cooking for several people (well, that ain't happening), doing meal prep several days in advance / cooking larger portions that you can eat over a couple of days, and buying frozen ingredients (still better than buying entire frozen meals). Some non-frozen ingredients keep for a long time, too, e.g. dried rice or noodles, onions, pickled vegetables.

A freezer and a pantry full of canned and dried foods.

Only buy fresh meats and veggies when you are actually gonna cook.

Freeze leftovers in single portion sizes.

Eventually you’ll have a bunch of homemade frozen dinners to choose from.

It's not for everyone, or even most people probably, but I deal with it by buying virtually the same thing every week, once a week. No impulse buying. So, I eat everything I buy, every week, because I know exactly how much I eat for each meal, each week. I waste nothing. I don't need a list, I know the path through the store I will take, and I'm in and out in about 20 minutes, including checkout.

I decided to stop thinking about food as entertainment or reward, and now think of food as only nutrition (as much as I can, it's not easy, but that's the idea.)

Meal plan. Write what you're cooking for the week, buy only ingredients for that.

Anything uncooked goes in the freezer, you can defrost and cook/reheat a lot of food, stop throwing stuff away.

If you don't have a good sized freezer, buy one. There are small ones that fit in any home.

Too many veggies? Chop them up and put them in quart sized containers. You can add them to any soup or stew.

I have a five quart pot; make chili/stew/soup and freeze in pint size containers.

My house has a good freezer, here's the first i searched out as an example.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Magic-Chef-3-5-cu-ft-Manual-Defrost-Chest-Freezer-in-White-HMCF35W5/313922431

Here's a tip I learned so very long ago: Never shop hungry.

That being said, I'm really careful about what I buy anyway and plan my purchases so that I end up using everything. Fresh foods can still spoil because I didn't spot a moldy spot, but that's pretty rare. Dried foods are great.

Honestly I have little good advice to give aside from awareness and planning, since I am by nature perfectionist about my food and budgeting and can't relate to the meme.

Bulk make your food. I find that making cooking an "event" you do every week or so is much more manageable than trying to cook your own food each night.

I'm a big fan of soups, stews and chili. I have a large stock pot and I'll basically make one of those to where it's almost full. It can take a long time to cook that much food, but it makes tons of servings. Then I'll freeze 1/2 to 2/3 of it for future meals. I actually find these types of dishes are even better once you thaw them out. Nutrition wise it's basically a ton of veggies/beans and some meat, so fairly cheap per meal made and super nutritious.

Bodybuilder style "meal prep" is also awesome if you don't mind having the same meals multiple times a week. I like bulk making brown rice in a rice cooker along with some kind meat or fish and finally then adding in a microwave steam pack of veggies. If you have an Aldi available to you their California blend is awesome and fairly affordable for the convenience of just popping it in the microwave. Shout out to Sam's Club and Costco who both have bulk packs of frozen meat and veggies to help on cost.

It can get more complicated if you live with others who have different tastes and preferences from yourself. Another hurdle is having the ability to freeze all the excess foods. But when I was single living in my own apartment I don't think I ever ate more simply and affordably than that. Sprinkle in the occasional "treat" of some kind of takeout and you're living the good life!

E: This is obviously from a US perspective, but I'm sure my non-us counterparts can substitute in their equivalents where needed.

It comes down to planning meals and a certain amount of acceptance that what you've got in the house is what you eat, period, even if the specific food isn't what you're in the mood for at the moment. Fast food, doordash etc are difficult habits to break. They reward your desire to have what you want when you want it, which is a big reward, and can make living on your own food feel like a punishment by comparison. But that feeling is just part of the habit. Eventually it goes away.

Meal planning is overwhelming to me, so I made a habit of rotating a selection of staple meals with fewer, more stable ingredients. PB or eggs scrambled with cheese on toast for a breakfast. A salad of chickpeas, carrot, broccoli and avocado with a whole-wheat roll, or a lentil/rice bowl, for lunch. Precook larger batches of freezer-friendly staples like chickpeas, lentils, rice, turkey burgers, meatloaf, tomato gravy - reserve 2-3 days' supply and freeze portioned batches of the rest. Allow yourself less experimental ingredient buys per grocery run - so if it turns out they don't synergize with your staples, you're not accumuating a lot of dead-end ingredients.

with pen and paper

My SO has ADHD and used to do this. I just cook for the both of us now so it's less food waste. The only issue is sometimes he doesn't like what I make :/

Planning.

Buy food that you can cook in advance and reheat. Make a list of meals for the week, cook it all, then freeze it. Too tired to cook later in the week? Take it out of the freezer and reheat it.

Also, try to do recipes you can do in sequences that don't require too much dishwashing, then clean everything up at the end.

My problem isn't that I don't use what I buy, the problem is that I buy too much. Like the recipe I need calls for one stalk of celery, but I can only buy an entire celery plant, like 11 stalks in a bundle because that's all the store offers. What do I do with the remaining 10 stalks?

I only wish I could buy half loaves of the breads I like.

I can't get through a whole loaf alone to save my life unless I eat the same thing for 3 meals a day and I'd prefer not to.

I solved this by getting into a relationship with someone who genuinely loves to cook for others. I felt super guilty about it for a while but eventually got over it.

Please don't waste food.

No. I wait until the fridge is absolutely fucking empty and I eat every goddamn thing. You ain't gonna find no expired food in my household. And I don't buy things for the hell of it, and I don't buy shit in boxes. Cook in a pan. Buy whole food. Prioritize which expires or rots the quickest. I used a cast iron that I found in the trash. I don't understand how or why people have this issue. But I guess I've been poor for all of my adult life, so. If they drafted me, I'd say take me to prison bitch, because I ain't gonna fucking die for this place. I kinda wish I was never born. People throwing away food. Gawd I hate this country.

I buy stuff that lasts. For bread, I find that rye takes weeks longer than white or wheat to start going bad, and bagels last ages too. I make smoothies with mostly frozen fruit. For dinner stuff, if I'm not feeling like cooking I either buy things I'm going to eat in the next few days or I get these sealed precooked things from Aldi that are great and keep well. Coconut milk also tends to keep better than cow milk and lately I've realized I greatly prefer it.

About the only things that are super perishable that I keep around are bananas and avocados, and I just tend to eat these a lot. I also keep spinach or kale around for my smoothies, but I rebag them into separate smaller bags as soon as I get them. If my bananas are getting overripe, they get frozen for smoothies.

I also tend to buy canned soups, which last ages.

When I was cooking regularly I'd make a lot of chilis and pasta sauces. They're good to freeze and they keep well on their own. Chili is arguably better after freezing and having more time to develop.

You can definitely eat pretty healthy and keep plenty of food in the house without constantly chasing waste.

Start with just one recipe. When I first was getting into cooking I was buying too much making it overwhelming to open the fridge and decide what to cook. As someone else mention shoot for having leftovers. One recipe scaled for 3-4 meals that you can split into containers and throw in the microwave when you are hungry.

Clean-up is what stops many people. Get a good titanium no-stick pan - I like "Our Place" pans. Get individual portion meats or frozen meats or buy bulk and freeze in portions. Do the same with vegetables. Heat your seasoned pan up then put some oil in just before you put meat in. Cook meat until almost done, then add vegetables to same pan - heat them up. Serve. Let pan cool while you eat. Refrigerate left-overs. Rinse and wipe pan down. Wash dish. DONE.

1. Get a big freezer. It's really surprising how much delicious stuff you can make just from frozen stuff that can last you forever. Frozen food is also often more fresh and with microwave and air fryer the prep of anything frozen is actually not very difficult.
2. Outsource as much as possible. Often it's really hard to outcompete efficient kitchens. I don't mean order Uber eats or something but there's likely a place in your vicinity that does food prep where you can take your food containers and stock up for 2-3 days. You can even freeze some dishes.

Wife and I really did the math because we feared of becoming lazy and it makes absolutely zero economic sense to cook everything at home right now unless you want to treat yourself or live in a very economically unusual places where #2 is not accessible.

Go to store every day and only buy what I will start using that day.

Eventually, I extended the time, but I had to learn what I will actually use.