I have a relaxed, active life, am 66 years old. My vivoactive 5 body battery graph shows very high levels of stress unless I’m asleep or exercising. Am I truly stressed and don’t know it or is it a fault in the watch.

54 here and the same, I give up making this watch happy lol it always thinks everything is stress and drains my battery, I ignore all that bs anymore, no matter where my body battery is I can have a productive hard day, dont let this thing slow you down.

There are all kinds of stress: mental, physical, emotional.  Your body is stressed when you eat, drink and digest.  About the only time it’s not under stress is when you are meditating or sleeping.  Even when you are exercising, your body is being stressed, It’s just that Garmin labels it differently.  I think any stress level above 100 is labeled as “Active” (my opinion).

Watch what and when you eat.  Avoid sugar, carbs and alcohol, and try not to go to bed with a full stomach (I don’t eat after 3:00 PM).

Hi, after a month the situation has remained unchanged?
Statistically you are not the only one, take a look at this discussion:

forums.garmin.com/.../

Hi, I had the same situation with software version 13.17, last night I updated to 13.19 and suddenly I have no stress anymore. Looks like they've fixed this problem

I am 49 and have the same thing.  My heart rate is always much higher than my other people's, and that worried me.  I had *** cancer 4 years ago, and my family doctor and I were worried that the radiation had damaged my heart (left side.)  This triggered a ton of cardiac appointments, even wearing a monitor for a while.  Turns out, my heart is perfectly healthy, and even though I have pretty bad asthma and allergies, my heart just beats faster than the norm.

The higher heart rate triggers the body battery to think I'm stressed.  Even when my mental stress levels are low, my body battery is low because it interprets my higher heart rate as physical stress.  I wish it would learn over time that this is simply my physiology.  My heart beats faster.  It's stress, certainly, but  for me, it is normal.

I choose a watchface that doesn't show body battery.  It's a real shame, because that was part of the reason I chose this watch.