Being over leveraged is the main cost you pay not margin interest. Hence it is irrelevant whether you buy options to avoid paying margin interest or whether you buy stocks and borrow capital. The cost of margin is immaterial in the context of being overinvested and not having an edge.
If the main reason why your account is bleeding is being overleveraged then you need to reduce size. If you can't fund properly sized positions then you have no business trading (yet) unless you want to lose even more. It's really that simple.
Regarding the simple idea of long option trades in general, this only makes money when the options are cheap enough. How do you know if the option's cheap? That's with respect to realized vol of the underlying, over the life of your position.
Also my personal opinion on your comment of "...I like simplicity so have avoided multi legged strategies up to this point." Having significantly delta exposure is only doable you have a significant edge in forecasting the underlying price direction. Otherwise, you need to hedge your delta, or your P&L vol will be way too high which implies a "volatility tax" (look it up), and that means at least 1 more leg.
Some good advice so far but no one has asked the question have you been profitable trading just the stock or future? The answer to this will be your solution.
These posters gave you some of the best advices you are going to get. Read them carefully.
1. Most of us don't have any edge. Our entries might as well be random, in the long run random entries will lose money.
2. Unless you are an expert in option maths and their microstructures, to trade single options successfully is like buying on margin, you need to trade the underlying successfully.
3. Professional option traders understand microstructures, we amateurs have zero hope of doing that. We are better off betting on macro trends and macro structures.
4. Try this: display the historical stock price chart and the historical option price chart side by side and see the correlation and you will appreciate what I said.
I am paying forward, here are some suggestions for you as a possible approach:
1. Learn to swing trade the underlying successfully, then you can leverage by trading options instead of the underlying. Why option? If you ever had a margin call you will appreciate options, no margin call, only theta decay.
2. Select a good underlying, hold them long term and trade options around them (not just covered calls). This is a variation of Taleb's 80/20 rule. You objective is not to get rich quick but do perhaps 5-10 points better than buy and hold the underlying.
3. If you go long, don't buy anything with less than a month's expiration.
4. Next, learn to trade butterfly.
