Beyond the Plate: The Practice of Using Food as Inspiration

My relationship with food resembles an extreme roller coaster. I’ve struggled with excruciatingly painful emotional eating since I was about 13. Food has had a central role in my life since I can remember, it controlled and impacted my mind and behavior for a very long time. Food was my escape. Or so I thought.

I realized way too late that food was never the problem, it was the perceived solution to problems in other areas of my life that I resorted to due to lack of better options at the time. Clearly, nothing was solved. Instead, I gradually sunk deeper and deeper into self-hate, self-sabotage, toxic dietary beliefs, and body dysmorphia. Then I hit rock bottom. From there on, it was either moving forward or sentencing myself to a lifetime of self-pity and despair. But I refused to let food determine my life for me and decided to transform my biggest challenge into a healing mechanism.

Today I use food as art, as inspiration, as a therapeutic strategy to help myself overcome my eating challenges, and as my main tool to nourish and nurture both my body and my mind.

In 2015 I started Foodie Boulevard – originally a blog about healthy inspirations that gradually transformed into an organization with a lifelong mission to redefine the role of food in our lives.

I have dedicated my life to helping people of all ages with with various goals, skills, financial resources, and time cultivate long-lasting, flexible and easily applicable healthy habits.

I work with kids and teach them to perceive the role of food beyond the plate by involving them in creative activities and games that use food as a creative outlet and educational strategy.

I work with busy professionals and equip them with tools and ideas how to optimize their time and budget, teaching them how to design personalized sustainable healthy eating and cooking habits without going into extremes.

I work with women who like myself struggle with eating challenges and together we transform the definition of food from a challenge into a catalyst for a harmonious life.

I wrote and published a revolutionary and disruptive non-recipe cookbook that is built as a self-help, learn-as-you-go customizable recipe development and food design tool that teaches readers how to optimize their eating habits by creating their very own delicious and nutritious meals based on their personal preferences, goals, skills, and experience.

But most of all I am grateful. Had I never had those eating challenges, I would have never had a reason to look at food from an alternative perspective. To me food is not just something you eat. Food is emotion. It is a time machine. It is an experience. It is a unique type of art that enables the most intimate relationship between the inspiration, the creator, the masterpiece, and the audience. Food is my language. It is my platform. It is my instrument. Food is my calling, my passion, my mission. And I can’t wait to learn all the lessons it has to teach me.

Sofia Yotova

Inspiration.Passion.Humility.

I am the CEO and Founder of Foodie Boulevard – a practical guide to cultivating personalized healthy eating and cooking habits beyond stereotypes and extremes. I am a published author, blogger, lecturer, and workshop organizer. I am a recovering ED warrior and a healthy recipe developer who strives to debunk the myths about healthy eating and to constantly illustrate that nourishing and nurturing food can be extremely delicious, quick and simple to prepare, bring pleasure to our senses and take care of our bodies and minds. I am a certified Eating Psychology Coach and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Ambassador.

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