Trimester-Specific Intuitive Eating in Association With Gestational Weight Gain and Diet Quality

Abstract

Objective: To examine the associations between intuitive eating and trimester-specific gestational weight gain (GWG), and between intuitive eating and diet quality at each trimester.

Design: At each trimester, participants completed the Intuitive Eating Scale-2 and 3 24-hour recalls from which the Healthy Eating Index was calculated. Trimester-specific GWG was calculated with interpolated weights.

Participants: A total of 79 pregnant women.

Main outcome measures: Intuitive eating, GWG, and diet quality.

Analysis: One-way ANOVA was used to compare intuitive eating scores between GWG groups. Pearson correlation analyses were used to assess the association between the intuitive eating score and the Healthy Eating Index score.

Results: In the first trimester, women within GWG recommendations had a higher total intuitive eating score compared with women above recommendations (3.9 ± 0.5 vs 3.6 ± 0.6; P = .04). The unconditional permission to eat subscale was associated with lower diet quality in the first trimester (r = -.26; P = .02) whereas the body-food choice congruence subscale was associated with better diet quality in the second and third trimesters (r = .26, P = .02 and r = .27, P = .01, respectively).

Conclusions and implications: The researchers found an association between higher levels of intuitive eating and adequate first-trimester GWG. Further research might investigate whether promoting intuitive eating among pregnant women favors healthy GWG.

Keywords: diet quality; gestational weight gain; intuitive eating; pregnancy.