Rida Yanna Primanita, Aufizzahra As Syafiyah, Alfian Yanda Putra
Obesity is a significant global health challenge often accompanied by weight stigma and psychological distress. This study aimed to examine the structural relationships between self-love, self-compassion, body image, and self-acceptance among adults with obesity in Indonesia. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted involving 200 adults with obesity (Body Mass Index > 23 kg/m2). The participants consisted of 71% women and 29% men, all within the age range of 18-40 years. Data were collected using self-report measures and analyzed using path analysis with bias-corrected bootstrapping (5,000 resamples) to estimate direct and indirect effects. The findings revealed that self-compassion was the strongest positive predictor of self-acceptance. Contrary to expectations, neither self-love nor body image significantly predicted self-acceptance directly. Furthermore, body image did not mediate the relationships between self-love or self-compassion and self-acceptance. These results suggest that for adults with obesity in Indonesia, self-acceptance is predominantly driven by internal emotion-regulation mechanisms (self-compassion) rather than by body evaluations or motivational self-love. Psychological interventions should prioritize fostering self-compassion to enhance well-being in this population. © 2026 Primanita et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Health, Universitas Negeri Padang, West Sumatra, Padang, Indonesia; Sahabat Indonesia Center for Psychological Services, West Sumatra, Bukittinggi, Indonesia
