Whoop! There it is.
Like every bio hacking millennial hipster before me, I recently purchased myself a Whoop band, and surprisingly, I love it.
I’m just over a month in with my wrist-sized Bryan Johnson and I do feel like it’s had a positive impact on me.
Why did I buy it?
I bought it because it fit into a broader 2025 theme for me of prioritising my health in a big way, and because I wanted to be cool like Bryan Johnson.
And it has delivered on both counts in spades.
Q1 + Q2 of 2025 saw me doing a full 180 on tech and it’s invasive species-like product mix of devices, so present-day Linda now comes with a full sized iPhone, an Apple watch and a Whoop band.
Gone is my dumb phone and all the delicious peace of mind it granted me and in its place is a morning ritual of reviewing my sleep score from the previous night, HRV and VO2max.
To say I went full Bryan Johnson this year would be an understatement.
And come October, you’ll know exactly why.
It’s not all bad though, I have to admit I really enjoy the Whoop band.
It has had three major impacts on me:
1. I am now far more careful with and respectful of my sleep.
I was pretty good with this in the past (relatively speaking) but there were somethings that had a lot of room for improvement. Namely, my sleep consistency and my wind down routine – the latter of which was basically non existent.
I now put on my red light glasses ~5pm, and start my unwind routine at 7pm and this has made such a noticeable difference in my life in terms of how quickly I’m able to fall asleep and also how well rested I feel when I do wake up.
2. I realise now that I was massively overtraining, and this naturally takes a toll on the body. Your body has a finite amount of vitality for the day and everything you do depletes this.
This sounds super obvious, and I guess it is, but the rhetoric around us is so hyper focussed on mindset and pathological striving that its easy to forget that yes, you can will yourself past your physical limits, and yes, your mind does give up before your body does, but it’s important to remember that those limits are there for a biological reason and if you push too hard, eventually your body will give up too, (and no amount of willpower will be able to stop it).
3. I’m more aware of my stress levels and the emotional toll on my body that each day brings.
Again, file this one under: captain obvious, but I continue to be surprised every time the Whoop AI coach tells me that I’ve had a stressful day, and exactly how many hours I was under high stress for. ‘Really? When?’. So accustomed to the background hum of daily pressures and anxieties I have become, that it’s taken a soulless, non-physical creation of Silicon Valley to reconnect me with my own body.
I’ve traded in my deepest and most private physical data for the promise of better health and become a hackable animal in the process, just like Harari predicted.
Somethings to ponder.
And long live the Whoop band.
Stay classy ✌🏻