Baking Mad with Mum

Over the past 7/8 years, my mum has developed a crazy passion for baking and of course, a mother's home made bake tastes better than you could ever imagine! I absolutely love my mum's cakes! Every year, we are guaranteed to have at least 5 of mum's cakes because she always makes us a cake on out birthdays!

2015 was the start of something big for my mum because she baked the biggest ever cake for my dad's surprise 50th birthday party! We were expected at leat 30 people to turn up and given that 95% of them were Indian, it was guaranteed to be a big feast! I think we worked out that my mum had made 40 ounces of cake for the party and by the end of the night, there was very little cake left. It was no surprise that the cake got eaten so quickly... it was covered with fresh cream, one side was a layered birthday sponge with jam and cream and the other side was a classic chocolate sponge layered with cream. It was a cake lovers dream (it was my dream). It took my brother and my mum to carry the cake (it was ridiculously heavy with all of the cream on) and everyone watched in amazement as they carried it through the garden.

The moment was definitely spectacular for my mum because everyone was convinced that we had ordered it from a cake shop. This is what pushed my mum to thinking about doing something with her baking talent. After weeks of encouragement, she finally agreed to start up her own cake business. As I type this blog, she is trying to finalise her initial menu so I can start publicising for her.

With my dad working in events management and catering, this could see them working as a great duo in business or it could see them hating business together and taking their own separate business path. Either way, they both know I will always be there to support them with whatever I can. It's probably going to be a rough road for my mum to get her business up and running but I hope that with the power of social media we can get her making cakes for everyone to enjoy!!

Those of you who are interested in my mum's cakes, stay tuned because I will be posting links to her social media pages once they are up and running!!

Just another quick plug - please visit the Facebook page for my dad's business 'ZeN Event Services' through this link: https://www.facebook.com/ZeN-Event-Services-107160269443592/?fref=ts
Feel free to contact via email or phone if you would like to use our services!!

Thank you all so much for continuously showing your support and reading my blog. Over the past 2 months my page views have gone up so fast and I am so close to hitting another milestone!! I hope you've been inspired by my blog and I hope you all continue to read it!

All Love xoxo

It's More Than Just Eating!

It has possibly been the most stressful week so far this semester… possibly even this year! I feel more stressed out than I was during exam period because well… law school is horrendous when you have about 200 pages of compulsory reading to get through. Swimming in my readings for the past week have meant I was unable to post on my blog! I also went to a friend’s birthday party last Friday (12-02-2016) which meant my night was taken up by horrendous pop songs and Punjabi MC playing in the most loved student club in the city.

I had a sort of writers block moment when I tried to decide what I was going to write about so I took to social media and conjured up an idea for today’s post. My topic of choice is eating disorders (again it’s not the most delightful of topics) but I’m hoping that I can raise a little bit of awareness here and enlighten people on the real truths behind eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

I’m sure that most people are aware of the common features of eating disorders. Anorexia is commonly associated with people who don’t eat whilst bulimia is associated with those who eat to throw up. I reluctantly label these issues as ‘eating disorders’ because in my opinion, it is less an issue of eating and more an issue of mental processes and thinking. Having known people that have experienced eating disorders, I began to understand the home truths behind them. Furthermore, I reluctantly divulge my own issues here; I have, myself, fought through anorexia myself.

It is only recently that I have spoken about my own issues, purely because I hate addressing it. When I look back, I realise how much of a dark place I was in. Whilst I was never medically diagnosed with anorexia, I know now, my relationship with food was not healthy. I explicitly remember one day when all I ate was a bag of candyfloss and a few spoon-fulls of stir fry. I remember when my friends told me I should bring lunch to school and my form tutor writing a letter home telling my mum he was worried because my friends told him I don’t eat. For me, it felt good to be hungry, the pain was worth the flat stomach and the skinny legs. I used to count my calories and limit my intake. I realise now how much it affected my life, I was physically and mentally unstable. I hated myself if I ate more than one bag of crisps a week and I would constantly look for ways to hide the fact that I didn’t eat. Luckily for me, I realised I was damaging my health and started not to care so much about it. However, like I said, these ‘eating disorders’ as we so classify them, are a mentally exhausting battle. I wasn’t worried about what was healthy, I was worried about how much I was eating. I was worried about how I looked, everyday I would look in the mirror and think my stomach was sticking out too much. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that I love my body now, but I am comfortable. I no longer feel the need to point out how skinny my legs look, I don’t seek reassurance about my weight anymore, I have coping mechanisms. I eat more, I eat healthy.

When I first started university, all of my flatmates would point out how all I eat is soup and toast and my parents would keep telling me I’m losing weight. This was the point at which I started to address my issues. I began to feel ashamed of what I looked like, ashamed of how people would tell me I look like I’m going to snap. It almost went from one extreme to another and (again, I am reluctant in divulging this information) having a controlling boyfriend who actively forced me to eat, made me feel worse. During college, whenever I went to his house, he would make me eat food, even if I didn’t want to. I had just started getting a hold on my issues (which he was not aware of) and then I slipped back into them because I started to resent the fact that he would make me eat. I started out appreciating the care he showed but when all I could think about was putting on weight, I hated it. I hated eating, I would make excuses but he would never accept them, that’s when I started lying about how much I had eaten. It sparked my unhealthy relationship with food again because I convinced myself I had eaten and that I wasn’t hungry.

This is why eating disorders are so much more than eating disorders. Often, I see people saying ‘oh for goodness sake I don’t understand why they don’t just eat!’ when they talk of people being anorexic. Most of society fails to acknowledge the fact that anorexia is a mental battle. On the NHS choices page, the first line in explaining anorexia is that it is a ‘serious mental health condition’ and I honestly wish more people would come to appreciate that. It’s highly unlikely that anyone would count their calories and restrict their intake unless there is some underlying issue or purpose.

People with eating disorders are not attention seekers. People with eating disorders are not stupid. People with eating disorders don’t need food shoved in their faces. People with eating disorders need support, they need care, they need people to listen to them, to tell them that they are beautiful, to show them what is healthy. I strongly believe that a lot of the media fuels eating disorders too, because we are trying to achieve what we see, and we don’t realise that more often than not, it is impossible to achieve the photoshopped image we see.

There are so many people in the world that suffer from an eating disorder, and they suffer in silence. We often hear of cases where girls are taken into hospital because of anorexia but how often do you hear of boys being admitted with an eating disorder? It does happen, and we need to stop stigmatising anyone, especially boys, with eating disorders. I hate how society labels the same thing in a different gender. Why can’t boys have eating disorders? At the end of the day, it’s a faulty cognitive process, it doesn’t make someone weak or less manly or a girl if they have an eating disorder. So what if society says boys should have muscles and able to eat tonnes of food? You don’t need to be ashamed by the fact that you find it difficult to conform. Don’t be ashamed to admit you have an unhealthy relationship with food, don’t be ashamed to take the help being offered to you.

Whilst I was in school, a girl was teased for being overweight. She soon left school and when she returned, she returned anorexic. She was hit in the worst way with an eating disorder and what caused it? It was the society we live in. She was told being overweight was wrong and she was accepted into social groups again when she came back skinny. Following that, she was shunned for being too skinny. How can we let this continue in society? I appreciate the sensitivity of eating disorders as a topic to talk about but that doesn’t mean we should ignore it. We need to treat eating disorders with the same caution we treat other mental health issues such as depression. Whilst I don’t agree with immediate medication, I believe in therapy, counselling, talking, getting to the root of the issue, finding out why people are the way they are. What thought process do they follow? When you think about food what crosses your mind?

I understand that there will be no overnight miracle. We won’t wake up tomorrow to a world full of perfect people, where there are no eating disorders and where everyone is informed on what an eating disorder is, but we can definitely make a change. We can change the labels society puts on everything. Stop stigmatising people and making them feel like a social outcast because they don’t have a good relationship with food. We need to start looking beyond the physical symptoms of eating disorders to the emotional issues associated with it. Sometimes, people don’t even realise they have an eating disorder, they don’t wake up one day and think ‘oh I will be anorexic from today’ it’s often a long term, developing issue. It might start with a diet, then turn to a severe diet or bouts of severe dieting. There are so many signs to look out for.

To anyone with an eating disorder, I want you to actively seek out whatever help you need to overcome it. No matter what size or shape you are, you are, and always will be, beautiful. Just remember that a healthy you is a better you!

To anyone living with someone with an eating disorder, I want you to support that person. Be with them every step of the way, through the disorder and their recovery and even after that. Relapse is a possibility. Don’t give up on them, it might be hard but it WILL be worth it!

To anyone that has overcome an eating disorder WELL DONE! I am glad you found the support you needed and I hope that now, you are happy with where you are. I hope that you continue to be happy and keep getting whatever help you need.

Never be afraid to ask for help, EVER! No matter what you are going through, there will always be someone to help you.

If you’re in the UK and want to talk to someone about eating disorders, you can find contact details for Beat online at https://www.b-eat.co.uk/support-services/helpline

If you’re in the US and want to talk to someone about eating disorders, you can find contact details for Canopy Cove at http://www.canopycove.com/eating-disorder-treatment-center.php?keyword=getting%20%2Bhelp%20for%20%2Beating%20%2Bdisorders&gclid=CMKy3aDvgcsCFYIW0wodUMAITw

Alternatively, if anyone ever wants to talk to me, feel free to comment or email me. I am always here. Keep smiling.

All love xoxo

IT'S NOT A MASK!!

I missed Friday night blog night because I was finishing off my International Wildlife Law Seminar reading which seems to be never ending. Anyway, recent encounters have inspired tonight’s blog post.

If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that I’ve experienced issues with bullying. Once that stopped, I still maintained a slight feeling of hate towards my appearance and it wasn’t until my second year at university that I can truly say I fell in love with myself again. I’ve learnt to love my flaws because they make me unique. I still have some insecurities and I don’t for one second think I’m perfect, that’s an unrealistic opinion of anyone, perfection is an unattainable concept.

Like most girls these days, I watch make up tutorials on Youtube, learning about make up, what works and what doesn’t. I started experimenting and now, I know how to contour, strobe and bake my face and I take pride in the fact that I use one of these techniques every single day to apply make up. For me, this is a huge change because throughout my first year of university, the only make up I wore was BB cream and sometimes eyeliner on nights out. The first lipstick I purchased was in my first year at University and has been my signature red lipstick ever since. At that point in my life, I didn’t feel like I wanted to wear make up, I wasn’t one to sit in front of the mirror for hours. I was definitely more in love with my hair at that point so I would spent hours trying to braid my hair or watching youtube tutorials to find hairstyles for weddings.

My change in attitude towards make up was fuelled by the end of my relationship with the person I thought was the love of my life because that moment in my life signified the start of my relationship with myself. After the break up, one of my nearest and dearest friends said to me ‘Go home, sit in your room for hours and put make up on, mess around with your eyeliner and make yourself feel good!’ That was possibly one of the greatest pieces of advice I have ever got. I did go home and do that, and that pushed me to where I am today.

A couple of days ago, I was having a conversation with a friend about all the expensive make up products I want like the Anastasia Beverly Hills highlight and contour kit, the artis brush sets, the Kylie Lip Kit and Louboutin lipstick. She didn’t seem to understand why I wanted all of these things and that is fair enough because it was just a few years ago that I told her I didn’t understand why she always wore make up, even in the evening after a shower. To me, make up is an art. Anyone who knows how to contour, how to strobe or how to bake, has mastered an art and just like a conventional artist, its not just any product that will get the result you want.

As I scrolled through instagram, I showed my friend videos of people contouring and her response was ‘I don’t like that amount of make up, its as though they’re putting on a mask.’ First and foremost, the comment cut deep because I couldn’t help but think that was what she thought when I wore the amount of make up I do. Secondly, I did not, for one second, agree with what she was saying. You see, I don’t use make up as a mask, I’m comfortable in my own skin. I will leave my house with not an ounce of make up on, I just enjoy it. I enjoy taking 45 minutes out of my morning to contour my face. I enjoy waiting 10 minutes for my make up to set when I’m baking my face, I enjoy the result of a sparkling face when I’ve finished strobing. I also know it looks good, but that doesn’t mean that I put on make up to mask my bare face because I don’t like the way I look without make up. I’ll happily post a ‘no make up selfie’ and let the world see what I look like with make up. I don’t care what people think of my bareface because I love it, it is ME!

My 'No make up selfie' 

The point I’m really trying to get across here is that we should not judge others on our own views and standards. In fact, we shouldn’t judge people at all. I hate it when people comment on other people’s appearance or features. I won’t be a hypocrite and say I’ve never done this before because I definitely have however, I make the conscious decision not to do it. I don’t care what people look like, I don’t care if people don’t contour everyday. I think what annoyed me the most is that when my friend said the contouring was like a ‘mask’ I couldn’t help but think about the fact that she never leaves the house without make up. To quote her exactly ‘I only put make up on when I know I’m going to be leaving the house.’ Is that not putting on a mask for the world to see? I personally wear make up even if I’m not leaving the house. There have been many occasions when my parents have asked me where I am going simply because I have a full face of make up on.

Most days I do the full contour + baking 

Some days I do softer make up, no baking, just contour and highlight 

The moral of my blog (sorry I feel like it’s been a long rant) is that, when you see someone will a full face of make up, contour and all, don’t automatically assume they hate their natural look because more often than not, that is not the case. A lot of times, these people love their face and that is why they love to wear make up!! They’re enhancing their features and whether you like it or not or think its too much make up, they will continue to do it! If they love it, why should you care? Make up enhances, it is not used as a mask by everyone. Stop jumping to conclusions and judging people against what you do/don’t do.

All love xoxo