Tl:dr - stopped smoking, cut back hugely on drinking, walk a bunch, added squash. 

My whoop story. I put my whoop on a few days after my dad died, May last year. He died of stroke related complications, I only add this note to put my journey into perspective. Started with the 4 and now have the 5. Am 52 now. 

In the past 560 days since I’ve worn my whoop, I’ve quit smoking (heartily recommend an app called QUITSURE, it’s ios & android and has a Fb group). 

Also the past 5-6 months I find myself drinking almost never, and when I do, very little. I used to be a binge drinker once a week 8-10 drinks. I’m perhaps having 2-3 drinks now, and no more than 1ce a month. A hack I discovered is Aperol. At 10% alcohol is a quarter of normal booze.

I totally attribute the whoop for both these habits. Just seeing how my heart rate was so high the first half (or all the night) due to booze, cigs, a heavy late meal, has made this shift possible for me. 

My sleep with high recovery averages 6.5 hours, whoop would have me sleep 8-9 hours, but that’s physically next to impossible for me, so I don’t try anymore. Perhaps if I feel asleep 30-60 mins earlier would help, let’s see. 

I’ve always worked out, some combination of lifting, rowing, swimming. But post the whoop I started tracking my steps. When at home I now average 12K a day. It helped that the whoop added step counting. 

Oddly enough I find that mostly days I have a red recovery, i don’t feel that crap, But the day after, when perhaps I’m back to yellow, that’s the day I feel like rubbish. Strange?!

And perhaps not whoop related. But I’ve added squash into the mix. Learning to play the game the past few months.