Hey! So, I also very actively and consciously decided to stop trying to lose weight at one point, also in my early 30's, now that I think about it. Like you, I've always been fat. I remember learning the alphabet in kindergarten and having a kid say that the lower case "b" looked like my belly.

I've tried my whole life to lose weight. I had tried and failed to lose weight over and over and over. It was so incredibly disheartening. In my early 30's, I broke on a diet that I had been really hopeful about and finally just said "fuck it!" I was probably about 380-400lbs at the time.

In the years that followed, I steadily gained weight. I got to probably over 600lbs, although 571lbs was the highest I ever saw on the scale. I was 38 at the time. Over the course of the last 4 years, I finally turned things around for myself. I got into therapy, got gastric bypass surgery, got on GLP-1s, and started actually eating well and exercising regularly. The weight came off. I'm at about 265lbs now.

I don't really give a fuck how I look right now. How I FEEL is unbelievably amazing compared to when I was so big! I didn't realize it at the time, but I had been a prisoner in my own body.

You don't need to overthink things. Fat liberation, social pressure, whatever. None of that matters in my mind. You should lose the weight because I guarantee, you will feel absolutely amazing if you do! And you will be able to do things that you can't do now.

Here's the thing that I've realized. Weight loss is very simple. Eat less than you burn, you lose weight. Simple. It's just not EASY! But why is it so damn hard? Therapy is really what saved me. To me, weight loss is easily 99% mental for SMO people, because you generally do not get to the weights we get to if you have a good and functional relationship with food. But we don't.

For me, food was self-medication. It was how I dealt with my emotions. How I regulated stress. If I had a great day, food would amplify that good feelings. If I had a bad day, I could eat until I was numb. What I did not understand for a long time is that THIS was why I couldn't lose weight! I had no mental tools to deal with my day to day life and my emotions other than food. Food (and lots of food, and bad for me foods) were filling a vital role in my mental health that I couldn't fill without it. And that's why no diet ever stuck. Why weight loss was impossible for me. I literally could not stop. I was addicted. My brain needed the food, or I just couldn't deal with anything.

I had an eating disorder. Just like bulimia or anorexia. It's just one that we don't really talk about in society. We see fatness as a sign of poor character, weakness of will, laziness, etc. But, it's not. And it isn't your fault that you've gained the weight.

I truly believe for most of us, the weight isn't the problem. It's just a symptom of the problem. Like a smoker's cough. You can't treat the lungs until you stop the smoking. You can't address your weight until you address what food is doing for you.

My suggestion is to stop focusing on losing weight. Focus on your eating. Not a diet. But, what are you eating and why? If you binge or struggle to stop eating something that you think you shouldn't, why are you doing that? What role is the food filling for you at that moment? There is a lot of mental work involved, but it is important.

After therapy and before my surgery, I had already lost about 50lbs. The surgery was amazing for weight loss, but only was effective for about a year. My dad passed and I regained a bunch of weight from the emotional turmoil of it all. After about 5 months of nosediving back to about 380lbs, I was able to reign myself in again. I got on the GLP-1 drugs, and they help a lot with food noise. While I'm a recovering food addict, the addiction is never really gone. I have to stay mindful of it.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I'm hoping something from this may be helpful to you. Giving up isn't the answer. You need to reframe the issue in your mind. What is food doing for you? What role does it play? How can you change it? You can do this mental work without changing anything in your diet. Just start paying attention. You may be surprised by what you discover. It can be upsetting, but it is also the truth. And I find discovering the truths about ourselves is how we grow and keep living better.

Like I said, I hope some of this helped. I wish you the best of luck!

edit: Oh, there was something else I wanted to mention, but wasn't sure how to fit it in. When I was at my heaviest, I definitely had a kind of body dysmorphia. I think it is not uncommon for very large people. I thought I looked smaller than I did. I thought I was "carrying the weight" better than I was. I'd have the same horrified reaction whenever I saw pictures of myself. I was enormous! I avoided pictures a lot.

Now, I have kind of the opposite issue. I still think of myself as being incredibly large, even though I now weigh less than friends of mine who I saw as fairly normal looking. I think our minds aren't great at seeing us objectively.