26 and Facing Realizations After Several Years of Doubt

Hi, everybody. I'm 26 years old and I've always considered myself a more masculine guy and I've also been attracted to women. Up until recently, I've been very overweight and have used that as an excuse to not put much effort into pursuing sexual or romantic relationships. Now that I've lost a considerable amount of weight and I've begun to consider myself "dateable", I've lost my low self-esteem crutch and I'm slowly starting to acknowledge some things about my sexuality.

The confusing thing is that my attraction towards men didn't really manifest itself consciously until around age 22, with the majority of it being acknowledged in the last year. When I first looked at sexual material with men, I wanted to look away and was kind of taken aback. But I returned after a bit, and with each passing day it seems stronger and stronger and my attraction towards women seems weaker.

I guess what I'm trying to reconcile is why did these feelings lay so dormant up until (fairly) recently? I see a lot of stories here about people knowing since they were young, and it just seems so disconnected from my story. At the same time, I feel like I would have to have been very repressed to not experience this stuff strongly until 22, and I worry it's a replacement for not receiving affection from "what should be my primary target" (AKA women).

It's just now that I think more and more about it, I picture myself in a happier relationship with a man. It also seems like I could go either way at this point sexually, but I also feel romantically connected to men.

Sometimes I feel like I'm full-on gay, that I'm slowly accepting it, and that I'd be happier pursuing it. Sometimes I fear that I'm a heterosexual guy that's just psyching himself out for waiting so long to open himself up and is just trying to find a new game and a new set of rules to play by. Please let me know if this sounds familiar or you have any words. Thanks.