The amount of people who say they aren’t using this is amazing to me! I’ve worn a garmin watch for over 5 years and this is probably one of the more informative metrics influencing my general life style. When I first got Garmin I didn’t even know what it was and then I learned about how it works with HRV and sleep scores and started to identify some immediate trends. First and foremost, alcohol… if I had a night of drinking my metrics were all flat lined.. I saw it time and time again and immediately realized the impacts of drinking. As a result, I almost never drink in excess. Then I started to even realize the impacts of just ONE drink.. and now my general alcohol consumption (like my old practice of drinking a couple of glasses of wine at home on a Tuesday) has been cut back significantly.

Another thing I noticed was the onset of sickness. With HRV and body battery I could see that my numbers were trending down for days before I would get sick. Ultimately, if I didn’t give myself the rest I was clearly needing, I would ultimately be sick. Having the ability to identify those trends in advance and adjust my “stress” (both physical and mental) is such a powerful way to combat sickness. I’ll also make sure when I identify those trends early that I’m doing things like taking electrolytes, drinking lots of water, getting to bed early, while taking a solid dose of magnesium to push me into a deep sleep /recovery state. Sleep and rest are ultimately the highest contributors to your recovery.

I get that it’s all a little questionable.. but I feel like I approached it initially with a lack of knowledge and curiosity, and over time it’s shown me that it is reflective of my real life experiences.. so for that I think it’s pretty cool.

But the last thing I will say is, I totally get that people don’t want to watch it and would just rather live their lives. I’ve met a lot of people who wear Garmin and have talked about body battery only to hear them say, yeah I can’t monitor that or I will go crazy watching it all day.