You've answered your own question.

This extra weight has definitely affected my confidence when it comes to approaching,

However there is also the truth that fat is not as attractive as ripped

You know what you have to do. Concentrate on fixing yourself and stop trying to approach women before you get hit with a SA charge.

Do what you need to for your own mental and physical health. After a bad divorce I was severely overweight. Over 350 and practically homeless.

I didn't give a fuck about any of that and slayed. I keep saying this because of the truth. Shortcoming are only as big of a deal as you want them to be.

Women like a guy that's driven to success. A work in progress is a guy that isn't stagnant. Most girls like a charming guy even if he's a bit of an investment.

Work on your charisma. You'll be just fine bro!

It's obvious that you don't have strong frame/confidence, therefore "can strong frame/confidence compensate for being fat" doesn't apply to you.

So you have to lose the fat.

Weight is an issue both externally -in how attractive you are and internally as in how attractive you feel.

Attraction is a whole bundle of things and weight is just one. You can still have good success if you have the other positives -happiness, confidence success and so on but it will be better to be a normal weight and fit.

Its important to like yourself, particularly when it comes to making women like you. If you don't like the weight lose it. Dealing with weight issues can feel impossible till you suddenly get a break through in mindset and feel confident that actually you can control this simply by not eating as much energy as you consume. Don't quit on yourself in this.

Goes without saying drop the weight

Yes you can get women but not dropping the weight and trying to swim upstream is cope no matter how good your game could be or is

Drop the weight

You can succeed but you know deep down it's not helping you

Being fat makes the hurdles to success higher than they absolutely need to be given that weight is one of the things you can control.

Can you spit game/peacock/etc, and still get at least some sex as a chubby fuck? Yeah. But you are going have to put in a lot more effort and skill than you would otherwise and your available target range is going to be smaller since weight is often a hard dealbreaker for many women.

Simpler to just fix your diet and exercise, to be blunt. Also, courts have not figured out how to take sculpted abs from men in divorces since fitness is an asset that cannot be reassigned via legal paperwork.

You are asking the wrong question.

You are asking if I lose weight, will women like me more? This is the same as a woman asking her peers 'If I get a boob job, wear more make up, wear shorter skirts, etc etc etc will I be more succesful with men?'

You are orientating your effort to the female gaze. This is inherent frame failure. It does not matter if you are fat or ripped, rich or poor - as long as you doing what you are doing in your life for the approval of the female gaze, you have essentially missed the point.

Frame is all. You need to stop wondering what women want and then rushing off in that direction. You need to figure out what YOU want, what is good for you (not them) and then act on that.

That being said - if you are overweight, then you should correct that (for you). being overweight is the most easily corrected flaw of all. I got divorced recently and went from 230 US pounds to 189 US pounds. I'm 6'3.

The good news is that it is easy. Go running (5k) 3 times a week and go to the gym 3x per week. Then eat only meat, fish, veg and fruit. It's that fucking easy. There is no excuse.

Is it still possible for an overweight guy to be successful with women?

Yes. Confidence + congruence + good game trump looks.

But looks help. Get muscles. Lose fat. It'll make things easier.

This extra weight has definitely affected my confidence

Then lose it, if you can't be confident (or at least fake it) while you have it.

Look, real life isn't a math problem. There are never guaranteed outcomes. There are way too many variables to account for everything. But the more you increase your odds, the more frequently you'll have favorable outcomes.

You can still get laid while overweight, but it'll be easier when in shape.

You can definitely be successful with overweight women.

Is that what you want? Is that what you think you're worth? Have all your ancestors survived atrocities so that you can reproduce with something you scraped from a barrel?

Per aspera ad astra

strong game can significantly compensate for poor physical appearance, but physical attractiveness is a huge factor as well. game can only help you so much if you're fat and butt-ugly.

yes, you can improve your odds with game but also hit the gym and eat healthier.

No, sadly this is completely impossible. An experiment conducted by a group of scientists from Australia in (iirc) 1974 has shown that it can not be done. Three scientists even lost their lives during the experiment, because it was even more impossiblerer than previously thought. Is this what you want to hear?