You clearly haven't tried them in any substantive way, because all I ever see you do is to keep steeping yourself in and perpetuating disempowering stories about yourself and about dating that are not objectively true. The fact that you haven't figured out how to disengage yourself from that mindset is not a reflection on the power of the advice - it's a reflection on you A) perhaps not having the proper support to assist you in doing that or B) your fear about letting go of those beliefs because they offer you something (even if they also make you feel bad).

I'm not recommending anything superficial, so I wish you'd stop saying that. People build real confidence all of the time - in making improvements at the gym, in learning new things, in healing from difficult childhoods, etc. I witness it happening every day in my work. And, you deciding that happiness, or fulfillment, or confidence can only come from feedback from others is an extremely disempowering and problematic belief but it is a deep seated habit of yours that no doubt stems from childhood. Of course, positive feedback is helpful and appreciated and helps to solidify our impression of ourselves, but having all of Self defined and rated by others is a horrible idea. It has to be a balance.

“When we stop caring about what people think, we lose our capacity for connection. When we become defined by what people think, we lose our willingness to be vulnerable. If we dismiss all the criticism, we lose out on important feedback, but if we subject ourselves to the hatefulness, our spirits gets crushed. It's a tightrope, shame resilience is the balance bar, and the safety net below is the one or two people in our lives who can help us reality-check the criticism and cynicism.”

― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don't belong. You will always find it because you've made that your mission. Stop scouring people's faces for evidence that you're not enough. You will always find it because you've made that your goal. True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don't negotiate their value with the world. The truth about who we are lives in our hearts. Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own. No one belongs here more than you.”

― Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone

I highly recommend both of those books to you (or anyone).

You don't know how to really value yourself and own that in a way that radiates out so that others can easily perceive it - but that doesn't mean it's an unknowable or undoable thing. Instead of focusing on learning how to really do that, you give it half-hearted tries and then go back to your old disempowering beliefs. I get that they are very long held habits and that part of you thinks they are "keeping you safe" somehow, but they really aren't. You can keep clinging to them, and I'm pretty sure that you will, but there are people who have faced much, much worse than you who have transcended their "evidence" and improved their situations with their attitudes and beliefs - people in concentration camps and POW prisons, for example, or abused single mothers who were told their entire lives they were worthless and stupid and ugly who figured out how to put that behind them and make better lives for themselves and their children.

And if you hate going to the gym, there are about a hundred other ways to keep in shape other than that. The best body I've ever seen on a middle aged man was on a guy who played ice hockey several times a week and never worked out in other way than that. You have a scarcity mindset, but it's been a part of you for so long that I don't think you know who you'd be without it, so I'm guessing it's going to stick around. I wish you well, and hope that at some point you will get past all of that, but it's got to come from within and just because you don't yet know how to do that, doesn't mean that it can't be done.

Take care, I'm moving on to other topics now.