Parenting Guide & Becoming a Healthier You Ft. Amna Niazi

This one is a conversation with Amna Niazi, someone I have wanted to bring on the podcast for a while. Amna is a food blogger, a content creator, and the heart behind the long-running blog City Says. But what we really dig into here is her personal journey: from a shy, confused schoolgirl to a vocal debater, from an angry young woman to a calm, self-aware mother, and from someone who felt she had no ambition to a person who now makes choices rooted in self-love. It is a conversation about parenting, wellness, therapy, and the small, quiet work of becoming a healthier you. No fluff, just honest reflections.

School, debating, and the invisible girl

Amna grew up in Lahore, studied at Convent of Jesus and Mary, then did her Masters in English literature. She tells me that school was a confusing time. She was shy, underconfident, and felt like she did not belong anywhere. “I was that confused kid growing up who didn’t know where I belong,” she says. But then she discovered debating, and something shifted. With a mic in front of her, she transformed. She became a debating star on the circuit, winning competitions and earning a reputation. Yet that confidence was fragile. At the podium, she would zone out, as if watching someone else take the trophy. She calls it imposter syndrome. Even as she was winning, she did not believe she deserved it. That internal confusion, she says, stayed with her for years. It is a reminder that what looks like confidence from the outside can hide a very different story inside.

From ambitionless to a chef’s coat

I ask her what she wanted to be growing up. Her answer is disarmingly simple: “I wanted to be a mom.” She had no big career dreams because she had no confidence to think she could have any. Ambitions felt like something for other people. After her Masters, she fell into advertising, then into styling, and eventually took over City Says when her friend and boss Sadf passed it on. It was a blog that became one of the first big Instagram presences in Pakistan. But none of it felt like her own choice. “I’ve always done everything that everybody’s telling me to do,” she admits. That changed when she started therapy. Through counseling, she began to ask herself: what do I actually want? The answer was cooking. She enrolled in a chef course at SCAFA, and for the first time, she did something purely for herself. Not for a career, not for money, not because someone else told her to. Just because it made her happy. That, she says, is her happy place.

The anger that therapy held

Amna is very open about her five years in therapy, calling it one of the best things she has ever done. She began because she was living with severe anxiety and a lot of confusion. But the deeper work was facing the anger she had carried since childhood. As the youngest of three daughters, she grew up hearing people ask her mother when she would have a son. She internalized it as her own fault. “I grew up with that feeling and that started making me angry resentful,” she says. That anger stayed with her into adulthood. Therapy helped her name it, understand it, and slowly let it go. She now believes everyone should have access to therapy, not as an insult but as a basic form of care. “It’s not an insult. Everybody needs a therapist,” she tells me. She has not missed a session in five years. That consistency is a quiet revolution, and it shows in the calm, grounded presence she carries today.

Motherhood and the noise around us

For someone who wanted to be a mother more than anything, Amna’s experience of motherhood still came with heavy challenges. But the challenge, she says, did not come from her children. It came from the environment: the unsolicited advice, the mom-shaming, the pressure to breastfeed a certain way, the expectations of the joint family. She tells me that when her daughter was born, she was already navigating a new marriage, a new house, and a new body. The pressure from outside made it harder. “I think the challenges of motherhood come from your environment more than from your kids,” she says. That observation is so real. It is not the baby keeping you awake; it is the voice in your head that says you are not doing enough. And that voice is often borrowed from society.

She also talks about parenting with respect. She treats her children as people, not as extensions of herself. When her son Zakariya asks to be paid for appearing in her videos, she agrees. She explains the value of his time and his work. She does not shame him into doing things; she gives him a reason. When she is wrong, she apologizes. “You can teach something with respect and you can teach something with shame,” she says. That is the difference. Respect is not the same as permissiveness. It is the foundation of a relationship built on trust, not fear. And when children feel respected, they learn to respect themselves.

Loving yourself first

Wellness is a thread that runs through our entire conversation. For Amna, it started when she began to like herself. She used to be a Coca-Cola addict, drinking three or four cans a day. When she decided to value her body, she quit, and she has not touched it in three years. But the real shift was not about the drink. It was about the intention behind the change. She went through a journey of accepting her body after pregnancy, not for how it looked but for what it had done: walked her through life, birthed and fed her baby, stayed up through long nights. “I fell in love with my body for what it does for me, not the way that it looks,” she says. That shift made everything else easier. She found herself going to the gym, meditating, doing yoga, eating better. Not because she hated herself into change, but because she loved herself enough to make better choices.

She now sees wellness as a layered practice: physical activity, gut health, meditation, and even trying new things like hypnosis or a silent retreat in Sri Lanka. She keeps challenging her body and mind, not from a place of punishment but from a place of curiosity and care. She reminds me, “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” That is the heart of it. If you do not fill yourself up, you have nothing real to give to others.

Enough is enough, and that is okay

One of the most refreshing parts of our talk is Amna’s honesty about ambition. She has no desire to hustle endlessly. She has a loyal following on City Says, she makes enough, and she is at peace with that. She does not want to be in the race. She chooses family time over a paid video if it does not feel right. That is a privilege, she acknowledges, and she uses it consciously. She knows that not everyone can say no to work, but she also believes that many of us never stop to ask if we have enough. “I think it’s okay. Everything kind of runs its course,” she says. She is not chasing more for the sake of more. That is a quiet rebellion against the productivity culture that tells us we are never doing enough. Amna’s life is proof that you can step off the hamster wheel and still be whole.

Why this conversation matters

I left this conversation feeling lighter. Amna does not pretend to have all the answers, but she shares her truths with such gentleness that it feels like permission. Permission to parent differently, to go to therapy, to love your body, to say no to work, and to want simple things. For the young mothers and women in my audience, her story is a reminder that the work of becoming a healthier you is not about perfection. It is about small, consistent choices, and about learning to be kind to yourself first. I hope you take what you need from this one.