#5 My Body Battery and Food

“Wearable tech and real-time health data give us the opportunity to shift from reactive care to proactive wellness.”
— Dr. Daniel Kraft

I’ve mentioned that using a continuous glucose monitor is really informative and tells you so much about your individual response to food.

Another device that I look at is the information on my Garmin Watch. My watch is not new, I’ve had it a few years, and the model I have was released in 2019. So it’s not like I have the fanciest watch around. If you have a Garmin watch, it can probably do the same.

There are a few interesting measurements: heart rate, sleep, VO2 max, but the measurement I am going to elaborate on is body battery.  It’s been interesting observing what my body battery does on a low fat, high good carb diet.

Garmin’s Body Battery measures your energy levels on a scale from 5 to 100, using heart rate variability (HRV), stress, sleep, and activity data.

Higher numbers (70–100) = you’re well-rested and ready.

Lower numbers (0–30) = you’re drained and need rest.

I mostly discuss my body battery with my friend, Milene, because we both have the same watch, so it’s interesting to compare.

In general, if I exercise regularly, don’t drink alcohol and eat healthy, my body battery will go above 80 after sleeping.  If I haven’t been exercising,  no matter how well I eat, my body battery chills around the 40 mark.

An interesting observation for me, when I eat food containing flour (like a pancake) my body battery shows that I have really high stress, even if I am sitting quietly on a chair. 

After eating, our bodies do experience a natural form of stress called the postprandial response… but I did research and asked around… one pancake doesn’t cause everyone to go into such a high, measurable stress response… actually it seems a bit abnormal.

I don’t tell my watch what I am eating. Somehow it picks it up by measuring my heart rate variability. For a while I thought it’s related to my glucose.  But, even if my glucose went to the same level with both meals, my stress response with bread and flour seems to cause the stress response.  It’s not sugar.  My body doesn’t go into such a big stress response when I have homemade ice-cream. (Which I make with cream and condensed milk.)

On this 40 day challenge I have not been eating processed foods, which includes white flour (yes, except for that cookie, but we’ll get to that eventually), so, looking at the information from my body battery, these foods which cause big stress responses aren’t ideal for my body.  Other people are not as affected by the same food. 

Even though my body battery is currently not great (because of a lack of exercise), my body battery has a more linear curve after eating.

Maybe I have some gluten intolerance… I will need to do some further observations.

These modern tools can really guide us in the right direction.  It might take some time and some experimenting with yourself.  But it can help show you what to eat and do for your specific health needs.

What I have learnt is that I should rather eat homemade ice-cream than pancakes🤣🤣🤣.

Seriously though, if we look at the data that our smart watches and a CGM give us, we could make adjustments to have more energy and feel healthier.

For me to get 100 on my body battery tomorrow:

I need to already have exercised quite regularly, and today I need to go for a 5km jog.  Then I need to stop eating at like 4pm, I can’t have any alcohol at all (alcohol drops my body battery like crazy), and I need 8 hours of sleep.

Even if I don’t like what my watch is implying, the data is still there.  What I do with this information it is up to me… and sometimes the doing is more challenging than the knowing!

“When we understand our health data, we can reclaim our power to make informed choices.”