Five Years, One Finger: My Relationship With My Oura Ring
A Journal piece, in Mel’s voice — this is personal experience, not general health advice.
I met Oura on 2020 — I sped through setting up my account and mistyped my email address, so it had to be reset. At the time there wasn’t anything to be done but start again, and fortunately I hadn’t been with it long enough for that to sting. My actual relationship with Oura properly began in 2021 after that quiet restart. Since then? Every single day. No gaps, no breakups, no “we’re on a break.” Five years of showing up, every morning, to see what my ring has to say about me.
I’ll be honest about part of the appeal at the start — Lewis Hamilton was wearing one, and for a while I genuinely felt like a superstar. Like I’d joined the elite. That’s marketing at its finest, and I fell for it happily. A founding member badge and a brush with borrowed glamour. That novelty wore off fast. What replaced it has lasted five years and counting.
What actually kept me coming back
It wasn’t the badge. It was the education. Oura has quietly taught me how to read my own body — not in a vague, wellness-poster way, but with actual numbers I could watch move. It’s cheered me on on the days I could genuinely be unstoppable, and it’s given me a nudge on the shoulder on the days I needed to sit down and stop pretending I was fine. I now have five years of annual reports sitting in my account, which is a strange kind of diary — a whole history of me, written in sleep stages and readiness scores.
It’s helped me stay regular with routines I’d otherwise let slide, and — just as importantly — it’s helped me rein myself in on the days I was pushing too hard and calling it discipline. It picks up most of my activity without me having to log a thing, and it’s usually pretty good at nudging me when it senses I’m stressed, or when I’ve actually managed to properly relax.
I’ve noticed two patterns in particular over the years. Eating late in the day affects my sleep — not dramatically, but consistently enough that I’ve stopped ignoring it. And being over-active without enough recovery catches up with me too. Learning both has meant I’ve got better at regulating my activity day to day, and then deliberately using that steadier baseline to challenge my body further when I’ve actually got the reserves for it — rather than just going hard and hoping.
Today’s a nice example, actually: 91 readiness, 93 sleep, 95 activity, 73 heart rate — off the back of a proper busy day, 17,000 steps including two mini workouts, one of them strength. I’m genuinely pleased with that. It’s the payoff of paying attention rather than pushing blind.
It’s also pushed me to challenge myself properly — chasing better scores, yes, but more specifically working on my VO2 max. And it’s not vanity, because Oura can’t see me. It’s reading how my body is actually behaving, not how I look.
When I started, it read me as roughly two years younger than my actual age. Five years on, that’s become six years younger. I’m terrible at maths, but even I can see that’s a proper double whammy: I’ve aged five years in real time, and the gap has grown, not shrunk, over that same stretch. My body is behaving more like a younger version of itself now than it was five years ago, not less. That’s what makes me feel ageless, and it’s a far better kind of encouragement than chasing a number on a scale.
The Oura Ring itself has come a long way
We started this journey with the chunky rings — no other way to describe them, honestly — and we’re now on Ring 4. Slimmer, longer battery life, and a handful of quieter upgrades I’ve probably half-noticed without registering, like faster syncing to the app. It’s a small object doing a lot of work, and it’s had to earn its keep to still be on my finger five years on.
The moment it actually proved itself
The one that really sold me on the value of it, rather than just the novelty, was a meal out with Jez. I noticed my heart rate spike after pudding — properly spike, not something I’d have felt or clocked without the data in front of me. That was my first real nudge toward understanding my own sugar sensitivity. It didn’t diagnose anything. It just showed me a pattern I could go and investigate for myself, which is exactly the kind of tool I want in my corner.
It took me a while to learn what the numbers actually meant, and longer still to adjust every time the app redesigned itself around me. That’s the less glamorous side of any long relationship with a piece of tech — you have to keep learning it.
The jet lag monster
Travelling is one of the most useful times to be paying attention. It shows you, in fairly stark terms, exactly where you need to take time out to refresh, and where you need to properly rest and recover rather than just push through. Jet lag has a way of making itself known whether you plan for it or not — but having the data means I can work with the recovery rather than pretending it isn’t happening.
Keeping up with the tech, mostly
Oura keeps evolving — AI coaching, food tracking, all the rest of it. I won’t pretend I use every feature; a lot of it sits there until I’ve got a spare few minutes to actually explore it properly. Today I did have that time, and asked it for a bit of coaching, which was a nice reminder that there’s more in there than I usually make use of. And on the nights sleep won’t come easily, it’s told me a story to send me off — a small, slightly surprising feature that’s earned its place.
If I’m honest, I do think a lot of companies have lost some of their capacity to properly sit and listen to their customers — not through any lack of care, but because there’s so much noise in the way now: AI, cost pressures, the relentless drive to market the next thing. It’s not a complaint about Oura specifically, more an observation about the space these tools exist in. I’d love to see more room made for that quieter, slower kind of listening.
Jez, me, and a friendly rivalry
During Covid, I wanted the whole family visible on one Oura panel — a small, slightly desperate bid for connection when everyone was scattered. It didn’t quite work the way I imagined, but it was reassuring in its own right: Jez and I could see and compare our scores together, and that became its own kind of practice.
Five years on, we still do it — now in circles instead of the old layout — and we still compete. Who had the better sleep. Whose readiness is higher this morning. And on the bad score days, we don’t just sympathise, we actually understand why, because we’ve got real information behind the feeling. It’s turned into a proper, ongoing part of how we support each other.
It took me a while to learn what the numbers actually meant, and longer still to adjust every time the app redesigned itself around me. That’s the less glamorous side of any long relationship with a piece of tech — you have to keep learning it.
Keeping both feet on the ground
I love Oura. I’m genuinely grateful to have it. But I don’t treat it as gospel — it’s not 100% accurate, and I use it for exactly what it is: a very good tool, not an oracle. That distinction matters to me, and it’s part of what I mean when I talk about Optimel — not chasing a perfect score, but using the tools available to understand myself better, stay consistent, and know when to push and when to rest. The commitment isn’t really to the ring. It’s to showing up for myself, day after day, and letting good information make that easier.
A note on this piece: This is Mel’s personal experience with a wearable device, shared as a “what’s worked for me” story — not a product endorsement or general health recommendation. Wearable data, including heart rate and sleep metrics, is a helpful tool for self-awareness but isn’t a substitute for medical advice or diagnosis. If something in your own data concerns you, it’s always worth speaking to a qualified professional.
Gut and Grain offers education and inspiration around food, lifestyle, and the gut-heart-brain connection. We are not medically qualified, and nothing here should be taken as medical advice.