In 2012, Will Ahmed launched Whoop—a wrist strap that tracks exertion, sleep, and recovery 24 hours a day—with some buddies from college. The former captain of the Harvard squash team was constantly flirting with overtraining, and as a result, got interested in how he could prevent it by learning more about his own physiology.
Ten years on, Whoop has a valuation of $3.6 billion, after closing a $200 million funding round earlier this week. The company has attracted investment from both big-name tech investors like SoftBank and athletes like Patrick Mahones and Kevin Durant. (The Nets star has seen his stake appreciate by roughly 2,800 percent.)
With more than 500 employees—nearly half of whom started within the past year—Ahmed’s a guy with a demanding day to day. So how does a guy who crafted an empire around dialing in good-for-you habits actually practice what he preaches and fuel himself and recover? We caught up with the founder to hear about his diet—which includes regular breakfast sandwiches and a lot of water—and which slip-up always makes his numbers tank.
What’s something about your morning that’s a non-negotiable?
I’m up at 7 a.m. most days, and the first thing I do is get out of bed and go directly into a freezing cold shower. I think doing things that naturally make you happy is generally a good idea. The cold shower also has a lot of other real health benefits.
What happens after the shower?
I brush my teeth, get dressed, and meditate for 20 minutes. Every single morning, I have to meditate. My wife tends to sleep in a little later than me, so I'll go back to bed, give her a few kisses, then I'm out the door. Depending on the day, I’ll either go work out with a trainer or go to the office. Most days, I’m at the office within an hour of waking up. I live very close, and I like to hit the ground running.
What do you eat for breakfast?
A breakfast sandwich. It’s either toast, eggs, and bacon or a lox sandwich. For some they’re a guilty pleasure, but I think if you’re naturally more slender—which I am—you need calories. If you're also going at a high output, which I tend to be, you need energy. I’m not an anti-carbs guy. I am an anti-dairy guy. I have no dairy in my diet. I also happen to be allergic to it. Plus I don't snack. So that’s three meals a day, no snacks.
What’s for lunch?
That tends to be my lightest meal of the day, and it’s usually a salad with a bunch of vegetables and some chicken in it. Some days I’ll do a chicken and rice dish. Usually on days where I've done weightlifting in the morning, I'll try to have more protein for lunch. There’s a place near the office, Fiouna's, which I love.
What’s your hydration like?
I drink more water than almost anyone. It's a running joke in my office. I have like these bottles just all over my desk [Ahmed holds up a Poland Spring bottle].
We’ve got to get you a few Camelbaks or something.
Now that I think of it, I drink very few (if any) beverages that have calories in them. I have a coffee in the morning, then it’s just water all day. If I have another coffee, it’s gotta be before 2 p.m. I’ve noticed that doing caffeine after that time impacts my sleep—which in turn can impact my recovery. I’ll have the occasional glass of wine or something, maybe more than one drink on a weekend.
What about dinner?
If I didn't work out in the morning, I'll try to do something at the end of the day around 6 or 7 p.m. I still play squash maybe once or twice a week. I’m in a soccer league, which is a hell of a lot of fun and also incredibly dangerous. I play golf on weekends, sometimes I run.
Then, dinner comes around 8 p.m. Definitely my meal with the widest amount of variety. Dinner tends to be meat-heavy, so that could be a ribeye, a steak, chicken, occasionally fish. I also eat out fairly often, or at least I did in a pre-COVID world. As soon as dinner is done, I put on my blue light blocking glasses.
Tell me about those.
Yeah, I’m a little crazy about this. They put me into a mode of like—bed and sleep are coming. They obviously block blue light, which otherwise is stimulating and can keep you awake. As you can imagine, I'm running a business, so I’m on my phone a lot. I feel like the blue light blocking glasses are kind of my get out of jail free card.
What else are you logging in your Whoop journal that we haven’t talked about?
Well, I try to spend around seven hours in bed, and I also take magnesium and melatonin before bed.
I’m curious, would you mark eating dinner at 8 p.m. as “eating close to bedtime” in the app?
This is definitely an area of improvement for me. I would say I'm working on trying to eat earlier before I go to bed. The challenge for me is that I'm also really optimizing around being an entrepreneur. I don't want to cut two hours out of my work day, in order to move up my dinner in order to go to bed. So that's the puzzle I’m navigating. Right now, I'm focused on being a great CEO, but I definitely think about that.
It’s been a big week for Whoop. If you're drinking a beverage to celebrate, what are you drinking?
A dirty Grey Goose martini.
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By Emily Abbate