Former Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain has opened up about the "physically and mentally” difficult 12 months she has faced. The BBC recently announced it would not be recommissioning Nadiya’s decade-long food show.

Since winning GBBO in 2015, Nadiya has presented a string of programmes on the BBC including Nadiya Bakes, Nadiya's Fast Flavours and Nadiya's Simple Spices. But in an Instagram post last year, the presenter revealed the BBC had dropped the show, describing it as a “turning point” in her career. Nadiya already had a “gut feeling” about the show, claiming that the BBC always had a “regimented timeline” of when books would be released and when shows would be filmed.

She says she had dates for filming “pencilled in the diary” but received a call from her agent saying the broadcaster “doesn’t want to do the show anymore”. Nadiya has now spoken out about how she felt after the cancellation.

Speaking to the Sun’s Fabulous magazine, she said: “The last year has been physically and mentally one of the hardest so my next biggest achievement would be choosing myself and deciding what’s right for me.”

It came after Nadiya said her three children, Musa, 19, Dawud, 18, and Maryam, 15, are her “biggest achievement”. Nadiya shares her children with husband Abdal Hussain, who she married in Bangladesh aged 20.

After her show was cancelled, she found herself making the bold career move to pivot into education. She is currently working in schools as a teaching assistant with a view to possibly becoming a teacher in the future.

The 41-year-old says other broadcasters, such as ITV and Channel 4, contacted her about another series, but says it’s “not something that I want to do”. Speaking to woman&home magazine, she said: “I’m currently working as a teaching assistant at a lovely little primary school. The plan is to gain some training and maybe in the future become a teacher.

“I had to do an application form, an interview, go in and sit in with the kids, and see how they reacted to me. I did get people ringing me, asking, ‘Sorry, is this actually the Nadiya Hussain?’ and I’m like, ‘Yes, it is and I am looking for a job, and I would like an opportunity.’”

Nadiya says she is “really enjoying” being in a school because she’s “not the centre of it”. She continued: “It’s weird because I’m having to straddle both worlds now, but I love that I’m a very small cog in a machine that helps raise other people’s children. I feel like this job is perfect for me. It’s my calling.”

Nadiya however is continuing to release recipe books for her fans. And while she says the decision to move from showbusiness to education hasn’t been an easy decision, she feels it was the right one.

She added: “There have been lots of tears, sadness and judgement. People [close to me] have asked, ‘Why would you go from being here, right at the top to being at the bottom?’ but I don’t see it that way. Just because I’m famous doesn’t mean I’m at the top. I have been at my lowest at the top. So what does being at the top really mean?

“Since working at the school, I’ve had some of my highest moments, like when a kid feels upset or dysregulated and you’re their safe person, or a child you’ve been working with, who struggled with a particular sound, suddenly recognises that sound and you do a ‘Faaaantastic!’ with them. Nothing beats that.”