Investigation of the relationship between pre-pregnancy intuitive eating behavior and body image perception and depression during pregnancy

This study was conducted as a cross-sectional and correlational research to examine the relationship between pre-pregnancy intuitive eating behavior, body image perception during pregnancy, and depression levels. The sample consisted of 375 pregnant women who applied to the Antenatal Outpatient Clinic at Istanbul Bakırköy Dr. Sadi Konuk Training and Research Hospital, Bahçelievler Campus, between June and December 2024 and met the inclusion criteria. Data were collected using the Descriptive Information Form on the Sociodemographic and Obstetric Characteristics of Pregnant Women, the Intuitive Eating Scale for Pre-pregnancy (IES-PreP), the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and The Body Understanding Measure for Pregnancy Scale (BUMPs). The data were analyzed using the IBM SPSS 24.0 (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) software. The mean age of the pregnant women was 30.26±5.86 years. Among them, 28,5% were high school graduates, 78,9% were housewives, and 86,1% lived in a nuclear family. The average number of pregnancies was 2.63±1.53, and the mean pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) was 25.14±4.68. While 63,8% of the participants evaluated their health status during pregnancy as good or very good, 51.5% of the participants reported not skipping meals. The mean total score on the IES-PreP was 4.02±0.84, the mean score on the EPDS was 7.51±7.09, and the mean total score on the BUMPs was 40.95±15.36. As a result, as the intuitive eating behavior of pregnant women increases, depression and negative body image perception decreases; as the negative body image perception increases, depression rates also increase.