Sombyr

Bear in mind what you're about to read is the ramblings of an autistic women. I may be a woman, but the world still looks a lot different through my eyes than it does to other women, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Anyway, definitely not too late to date. That part's simple to answer.

As far as losing weight, depends really on how much you weigh as for how it'll effect your dating options. For men, I think gaining a little muscle is more important than losing fat. Even if you weigh quite a lot, if you've got a bit of muscle showing through there will be women who find you attractive. I can't speak for all women, but to me, it's more attractive when a guy's body shows that they're thinking about their health than it is when a guy has a traditionally attractive physique. In other words, a little muscle shows you're putting work in regardless of if you're successfully losing much fat. You'll probably inevitably lose some fat anyway if you gain some muscle, because it speeds up your metabolism.
In the end though, physical appearance isn't as often important to women as it is to men. If you've got a personality that meshes well with somebody, they'll probably like you anyway.

What you're doing to meet people is good, but another good way to find people Imo, is through your hobbies. Although that can be tougher if all your hobbies are male dominated. Even if you do meet women into it in that case, I speak from experience when I say we're expecting to be approached and tend to already have our rejection locked and loaded. If that's the case, I'd say the best option is to wait and see if they show interest in you first.

Making more friends is also good. Besides the fact that it's good for your mental health, they can also introduce you to people, and somebody who knows you well is gonna be way better at finding people who will match well with you than anything like dating apps or searching aimlessly. I was introduced to my wife by a friend. They didn't even intend it as a romantic setup, they just thought we had a lot in common and would make good friends. The romance happened to blossom from that.

I'd end this off by telling you it's good to learn to be happy being single, but I know that's harder than it sounds, and sometimes you can't manage it until you've already been in and out of a serious relationship or two. Do take care of your mental health though. A happy man is an attractive man.

I get what you're saying, but like OP I'm the kind of person who can call myself beautiful but also have self esteem issues. In my case, it's because I know it's objective fact that people keep telling me I'm attractive, but I can't see myself that way. Like, maybe I'm just surrounded by really supportive people who can ignore my shortcomings easier, and one day I'm going to be exposed to the fact that it turns out the majority of the world thinks I'm ugly.

It'd feel like dismissing everyone who's ever been attracted to me to not admit that on some level I must be attractive, which would be rude, but at the same time I need people to know I can't see what they see.

Meanwhile I'm too autistic to tell when they AREN'T happening, and just keep talking until somebody respectfully tells me to shut up an take my turn.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually ask somebody to leave where I'm from. If it gets too late and our guests are still there, guess they're staying the night. Luckily, most people leave before then.
I've lived most of my life in tiny Vermont villages, for context.

When I was little, I had times where I just straight up slept at the dinner table because I refused to eat. My parents learned quickly that if they didn't want me to starve to death, they were gonna need to make foods I actually liked.
Once they'd been doing that for a while, I got a lot more open to trying new foods, even ones I didn't like before, because now everyone else was eating and enjoying food I didn't have and I wanted to be a part of that. Didn't make me automatically like everything, but it did open me up to a lot of healthier options.

I sort by active because the slower flow of content helps me avoid a social media addiction. I just check the few posts that hit the top of my feed every day, then exit Lemmy for the day.

I've always heard other women have this problem, but I've personally only ever experienced it with expensive brands like designer stuff, which designers for some reason think all women are so tiny that their size 18 should only be just barely big enough to fit a middle school girl.
Cheap stuff, especially stuff I find at walmart and such, seems extrodinarily consistent, to the point where I just pick up my size or one higher if they don't have it, and don't even bother to check if it fits.

Shoe sizes however... I'm 99% sure those are supposed to be standard, and yet I've found size 9s and size 12s that were the same size. Got sick of it and now I only buy men's shoes unless I need something fancy. Even then, logger boots are fancy enough to me.

Perhaps this will enlighten you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZVwFa-Fz5Q

And in case you don't feel like watching that: It's a meme harkening back to the stupidity displayed on a well known tumblr post, one of the many displays of which was somebody insisting 2 was odd.

Also see this Ace Attorney version, which is hilarious and the first place I'd heard of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFcyYnUHVBA

https://youtu.be/K3x8Tm7urfk?si=-_GUHpbEJN0BPash

I like your positivity.

Luckily, I am happy most of the time nowadays, just, y'know, in spite of my disorder.

As somebody with schizoaffective, I don't understand where you're coming from saying it means I'm the only one with power over myself. In fact, I've found even after being well medicated I'm incredibly easy to manipulate. All you have to do is tell me somebody's trying to control me and instantly I've spun a 2000 foot deep web about how they're doing it. Then you just tell me you have the solution and suddenly I'm eating out of your hand.

And my emotional barrier is paper thin. I only look unaffected by things. In reality if I'm the slightest bit scared or upset, I'm breaking down inside and spinning another web to fill in the cracks. My whole existence is built on delusions and lies I've built up to keep myself together, such that even now that I'm in a place where I theoretically could start breaking them down and rebuilding properly, I won't, because I'd fall apart, and I can't handle that.

I've decided to just be happy being fucked up. Not because that's right, but because that's the only thing I can survive.

I hate the whole "its" being converted to "it's" no matter what thing, but what I hate more is when I teach the keyboard a word, and it STILL won't let me use it. Taught my keyboard "that'd" and it would autocorrect it to "that's" every time. And unlike other words, if I went back and manually corrected it back, it wouldn't leave it, it'd force it back to "that's" again and refuse to let me change it. Come to think of it, it did that with "it'd" to "it's" too. Eventually I just switched to a different keyboard with much less aggressive autocorrect, since I still need the autocorrect to type with any semblance of speed due to minor coordination issues.

My old keyboard abruptly started autocorrecting more typos into what I was saying than it corrected toward the end anyway. Probably some shoddy attempt to implement AI auto correction.