The engine reports its own count, kept across recreates and starts by hand, not systemd's NRestarts or the runtime's RestartCount (novox/hq issue 458).
NRestarts and RestartCount reset on a start by hand or a recreation, so "whole life" was as wrong as "since" (novox/hq issue 458).
The count comes from systemd's NRestarts or the runtime's restart count; beside "since" it read as thousands of restarts tonight (novox/hq issue 458).