More on heart rate
After feedback from a friend on his personal experience with tracking heart rate, I wanted to take the discussion from last week further.
If you read last week’s post, I’ll start this discussion by clarifying my alcohol consumption. During a typical week, I don’t drink. If I’m going out with friends, I may have one or two drinks. This is once a month, sometimes twice, sometimes less.
If you’re curious what the difference would be between one and two drinks, I can share that data in the future. What I’ve seen is that one drink also impacts my resting heart rate (RHR). To a lesser extent, yes. Is it negligible? No.
Photo by @joshua_chehov on Unsplash
If you use a tracking device like Whoop, Oura ring, or similar, and you haven’t seen a difference between eating in and out…
Consider what you eat home and what you eat out.
Are they different? Or are they pretty close to the same?
The similarities between how I prepare food at home and what I eat at restaurants ends with…it’s all plants.
How are what I prepare at home and what I eat at restaurants different? It’s the oil, the salt, and the sugar. We can access objective data on this in an app like Cronometer.
I like to eat as much as I want, and I do. I’ll talk about weight in another post.
I’d also ask…
What’s your baseline resting heart rate?
And what degree of variance are you seeing between your highs and lows?
What I’ve experienced in improving my health is, the healthier I get, the more sensitive my body is to high fat, salt, sugar foods. Similar to alcohol, I get food hangovers.
Resting Heart Rate by age and gender. Source: Whoop
What else impacts my resting heart rate…
How late I eat.
If my food is not digested when I go to bed, my resting heart rate is higher. Food digests more slowly when we’re lying down and when we’re not moving.
What I eat, even at home.
Because I like pastries. Those I buy or make are healthy-er, but not as healthy, and not as easily digestible, as whole foods like dates.
Organic dates
What I drink, caffeine edition.
What time I cut off caffeine. If it’s coffee, I’m usually OK prior to 1:00pm though that’s pushing it, and earlier is better.
Activity level
“The most common cause of a high resting heart rate is a sedentary lifestyle, where you spend a lot of time not moving.”
Overall diet quality
Hydration and weight impact resting heart rate.
Raw fruits and vegetables are naturally hydrating because of their high water content.
[source]
Here’s my resting heart rate after a whole food plant-based dinner at home, no pastries.
November 9, 2024 Whoop data
Why do I care about Resting Heart Rate?
“Your resting heart rate, when considered in the context of other markers, such as blood pressure and cholesterol, can help identify potential health problems as well as gauge your current heart health,” according to Harvard Health.
[source]
I hope this was helpful. I love hearing from you, when you find something interesting or useful.
Thanks for reading!
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