Veli Deniz¹, Leyla Özgen^2,

Background: Emotional eating is caused by such factors as stress, depression, parental modelling, anger, boredom, happiness, etc. This study aims to examine the emotional eating behaviours of adolescents according to different variables. Methods: The population of the study consisted of adolescents aged 15 to 18 attending high schools affiliated with the Ministry of National Education in Istanbul, one of Turkey's metropolitan cities. Data were obtained from 600 students in total, with the final number of students being 431 after incomplete or incorrectly completed forms were eliminated. Results: Of those adolescents who engaged in physical activity, it was seen that 34.60 % engaged in very vigorous physical activity, 21.60 % in moderate physical activity, and 13.50 % in vigorous physical activity. It was seen that for the cognitive restraint subscale of the emotional scale, those with Class I Obesity BMI had a high mean score (=2.269), while those with underweight BMI had a lower mean score (=1.766). A statistically significant difference was found between the cognitive restraint subscale of the scale and BMI (P<0.01). Under the uncontrolled eating subscale, it was seen that the mean score of those who did not engage in physical activity was high (=1.984), while the mean score of those who did engage in physical activity was low ( =1.836). However, a statistically significant difference was found between the uncontrolled eating subscale of the scale and those adolescents who did not engage in physical activity (U=19599.000, P<0.05). Conclusions: This study showed that for the dieting variable, close to half the adolescents received support from nutritional experts and dieticians to lose weight and that the vast majority of them did not use slimming drugs.

adolescent, cognitive restraint, eating disorder, emotional eating, physical activity, uncontrolled eating