IPhone battery drain when not near watch

I am a fairly new user of a Steel HR Sport and I noticed that when the phone is not near the watch the HealthMate app goes from a typical 5%-8% battery usage per day up to 70%-80%. I suspect it is because the phone keeps trying to communicate with the watch, but since it cannot it decreases the polling cycle in its search for the watch. 

Have others seen this issue or do I possibly have something configured incorrectly? I have “background refresh” turned off, so it seems likely to be caused by something directly in the app itself. Back when I had a FitBit this did not occur, so wanted to check if it is expected behavior.

A simple solution would be to add a manual sync option so we could keep it turned off to save phone battery, then have a "sync" button that will sync the watch to the phone app.