I've been having an issue where my download from Realms is current, but when I play it locally it's putting me inside an older version of my character. So my location, inventory, experience, etc is all from 1 or more weeks ago. It seems that around the 1.4 update my own character branched into a Realms version and a local version.

Peeking in the saved game files of a newly-downloaded Realm, I can see references to each of the 3 Realms players I would expect, but also a ~local_player. My Realm character and my local character both have the same Unique ID, but different inventory, etc.

Contacted Realm Support and they suggested I report it here.