I was (have been being) tied up by (with my) work and studied (study) all these years so I didn't have enough time to cook, so (and finally) I decided to join (take part in) an Italian cuisine workshop.
It seems to me that "tied up by work" should work, but I don't think we say it very much. We are more likely to say "I'm tied up; I have a lot of work".
Also maybe it's better to use "enough time to learn how to cook" because the sentence suggests that the narrator wants to learn how to cook.