Today, I am a new person. Meet the new Adnan.
Adnan, who wakes up at 7:59 a.m.- one minute before the alarm. Not because he wants to, but because his body has apparently accepted that sleeping past eight is personal failure.
Adnan, who doesn’t check his phone first thing in the morning, but instead gets out of bed, stares thoughtfully at the ceiling for a few seconds, walks to the balcony, and opens the curtains wide. Fresh air, they say, resets the nervous system, but for me, it just lets the neighbors know I’m awake.
Coffee is no longer allowed on an empty stomach. According to at least four nutritionists on Instagram, three podcast hosts, and one man whose entire personality is standing shirtless beside a blender on TikTok, coffee before breakfast is probably the reason my life hasn’t worked out.
So today, I decide to make breakfast first.
I make five eggs because I am now chasing my protein goals.
I drink my coffee after, with a scoop of protein powder mixed into it because someone called it a “protein latte.” It tastes like wet drywall with hints of coffee, but health has never promised to be delicious.
Yesterday, TikTok informed me that I’ve been wearing the wrong colors for my skin tone my entire life. So today I got dressed carefully, because there is a shade of green that makes me look approachable and another that makes me look unemployed. I had no idea.
Today, Adnan decides to walk ten thousand steps. Nine thousand eight hundred doesn’t count. Nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight is admirable, but ultimately meaningless.
My friends want to hang out? I can’t, I am locking my steps in.
By noon, I have already consumed enough water to refill a small aquarium. I am drinking because my huge gray bottle has motivational timestamps printed on the side. “Keep going!” it says. I wasn’t aware we were competing.
At lunch, I briefly consider ordering a shawarma. Then I open the restaurant’s menu and realize they haven’t listed the macros. How am I supposed to eat from a place like that?
What if the garlic sauce alone contains three days’ worth of regret?
This is the new Adnan, who can’t take risks like these anymore. So he opens a can of tuna instead and wraps it in a tortilla.
By the afternoon, my smartwatch congratulates me for standing up. Lately, it has become the only thing in my life that celebrates the bare minimum.
That night, I feel oddly proud of myself.
I finish my steps, even though I can no longer feel my legs. I feel a little lighter, but somehow a lot hungrier.
At the end of the day, I sit on my bed, scrolling through Instagram, when it hits me: I have spent an entire day trying to become the version of myself recommended by strangers who wake up at 5 a.m, own matching kitchen containers, and somehow have the time to explain magnesium on the internet.
For a moment, I forgot what my own routine used to look like.
I miss hearing my mother yell from the kitchen that dinner wasn’t ready yet, while a giant plate of freshly fried potatoes sits on the counter, impossible to ignore. I miss stealing one anyway and pretending I hadn’t.
I miss falling asleep on strangers’ sofas when my parents stayed too long visiting relatives, then waking up the next morning in my own bed without ever remembering how I got there.
Back then, nobody counted macros, steps, or glasses of water. Nobody photographed breakfast before eating it. Nobody warned us that tomatoes were inflammatory this week and miraculous the next.
We simply ate when we were hungry, slept when we were tired, and somehow trusted our bodies more than we trusted people we’d never met.
So maybe the new Adnan isn’t the one who wakes up before his alarm, or drinks endless protein shakes. Maybe he is just the one trying to remember the old Adnan before the internet convinced him he needed fixing.
