Aim Intuitive eating is a concept that assesses the degree to which individuals rely on innate signals/satiety cues to determine when, how much, and what to eat. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate intuitive eating and eating behaviors in individuals receiving lifelong restricted medical nutrition therapy due to their diseases.

Material and Method Demographic and medical characteristics of 11 phenylketonuria (PKU), 17 type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM), 14 celiac patients and 13 healthy adolescents aged 13–18 years, who were followed up in the Pediatrics Clinics of Dr. Sadi Konuk Training and Research Hospital were questioned. The Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES) and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (DEBQ) were applied. The data were analyzed with SPSS v.23 software.

Results There was no difference between the groups in mean of height-for-age and BMI-for-age (p>0.05) (table 1). While there was no difference between the groups in the subscales and total scores of the IES-2 scale (p>0.05), there was a difference between the groups in the emotional eating and external eating subscales scores of the DEBQ, and this difference was determined to be due to the PKU and healthy control group (p<0.05) (table 1).

Conclusions It was observed that the PKU group was more affected by emotional stimuli than the healthy group and had more eating behavior in response to food-related stimuli, regardless of the internal states of hunger and satiety. The limitation of the study is that the scale suitable for the age group could not be used due to the lack of measurement tools evaluating intuitive eating and other eating behaviors suitable for the adolescent age group.