We're used to snapping up Trinny Woodall's style and skincare tips from social media - but it's her latest wellness buy that's caught our attention this time around.
If you're looking to improve your health and fitness this year then Trinny's recent purchase may be one for you too. Speaking on Instagram Live, she revealed she's "newly enamoured" by a unique fitness tracker after "ditching" her Apple Watch.
"Today, we're discussing the Oura Ring," she says, flashing a metallic band to the camera. Friend and yoga teacher Victoria Woodhall, who also coincidentally bought an Oura Ring recently, is in the background of the video. "We are newly enamoured...I love it so much."
The Oura Ring is a metallic band that wraps around one of your fingers. On the inside is a sensor that reads your heart rate, heart rate variability, temperature, and more to offer insights into your daily movement, workouts, sleep quality and duration, and stress levels.
While the Oura Ring is similar to the newest Apple Watch, the best Fitbits, and other trackers in many ways, the design of the ring and its focus on rest and recovery - rather than exercise - has quickly earned it a place as one of the best fitness trackers to buy in 2024.
For Trinny, it's the device's sleep insights that have her hooked. "I've been quite obsessed with sleep," she says. "I'm interested in the quality of sleep I've been getting and the different types of sleep: light sleep, deep sleep, and REM, and what [they do] to help us process our memories each day and reset. I learnt a lot of that from Matthew Walker [author of Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams] and I thought 'actually, if I have a ring, it would help me'," she says.
Trinny says that she wants to use the ring to program better sleep habits into her routine. "I feel the amount of REM sleep I have is really important and I always have between six hours and six hours and 20 minutes of sleep each night. I would love to have seven hours of sleep or seven and a half, which means I need to get my body trained to go to bed before midnight. I always go to bed at about quarter to 12, whether I've been out or not. I want to, actually, if I haven't been out, go to bed at ten thirty. I want to try and get to that and then if I can do ten thirty to six thirty, that would be a miracle. At the moment, I do midnight to six fifteen. [The Oura Ring is] really for that purpose."
Trinny and Victoria also reveal in the video that the Oura Ring is very easy to buy. While the two bought their rings online directly from the US-based brand, since it wasn't available to buy in the UK at the time, John Lewis now stocks the Oura Ring as the exclusive UK retailer. You can walk into your local store, or shop online at John Lewis, and order your choice of designs in various metallic shades with ease.
Shop the Oura Ring
Before you buy an Oura Ring, the brand recommends purchasing a sizing kit as the specifications of this device are unique. It costs £10 - and if you buy it from John Lewis, you'll get £10 off your Oura Ring purchase. So, it's basically free.
The Gen3 Horizon is one of two Oura Ring designs. The Horizon is completely round and a little thicker than the Heritage, measuring 3mm. Prices start at £349 and it's available in six metallic shades, including rose gold.
The Gen3 Heritage is the other model of the Oura Ring, slimmer in design and complete with a distinct flat top. Prices start at £299 and the device comes in four colours: Black, Stealth, Silver, and Gold.
The Oura Ring, which counts A-listers like Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow among its other fans, can also record your steps, predict how many calories you've burnt, monitor your heart rate, and record metrics from any workouts you do (like distance travelled if you go for a run, for example). It can use this data to predict how tired you are and tell you when you need to rest. These insights are all available in the Oura app, which you do need to pay an ongoing subscription for (at £5.99 per month) after one month.
Trinny says the ring has helped her count her steps and, although she questions whether the device overcounted in some cases, she discovered she does more than she thought. "I did, interestingly, 10,000 to 12,000 steps on Saturday and 17,000 on Sunday. That's a lot for me. I usually do about 5,000 steps a day."
"It just makes me aware of the movement of my body and I feel that's important for us too," she says.
"So far I’m loving this ring because it’s helping me understand how well I slept and why maybe I woke up not feeling great or why I woke up feeling better," she writes in the caption of the video.
