I’m an exercise physiologist and executive lifestyle strategist with over 30 years of experience helping leaders in their second fifty build a strong, and powerful Age Neutral Body™. At 66, the dream is to keep us highly performing so we can keep bringing our gifts to the world for as long as we wish to do so.

I envision a world where we are age neutral, which I define as being in shape to make age irrelevant. It's not about your age or avoiding death. It's about coming alive and living fully in a powerful and healthy body no matter what your age.

It's about a world where you are still dreaming, growing yourself, scaling your business, adventuring, falling in love, having fun and looking and feeling awesome in your fit and truly healthy body. I believe the way to do this is through what I call Long Haul Energy™.

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Energy is the currency of the body.

Your body uses energy to keep you alive and functioning. Your heart beats, your brain works, your muscles move and your cells carry out the work of maintenance and repair. Much of this happens quietly, all day and through the night. [1]

Then there is the life you ask your body to support: the work, the decisions, the people you care for and the things you would love to do. All of that places demands on you too.

When I speak about energy capacity, I am interested in how much of that life feels available to you. Can you meet its demands, recover well and still have something left for yourself? Or are you keeping things going while feeling that there is very little to spare?

I use four energy positions to open that conversation: energy wealth, energy mediocrity, energy poverty and energy bankruptcy. The triangles illustrate available capacity in relation to the demands of life. They are a way to reflect on your experience, rather than a numerical measurement.

Just like financial wealth the more money you have the better quality things you can buy. So it is with energy, the more energy units you have available to spend the better quality thinking, moods, sleep, relaxation, performance, stress tolerance, hair, skin, health etc. you can buy.

Where are you in your energy

Where would you place yourself? Think about your usual pattern of energy and recovery, rather than your best day or your most exhausting one.

Energy wealth

In my model, energy wealth means high performance, high stress tolerance and energy reserves you can tap. You have the capacity to meet your responsibilities and still have something left for the people and experiences you enjoy.

By high stress tolerance, I mean being better able to meet demanding periods and recover afterwards. The reserves matter when life asks more of you, and they need ongoing care and replenishment. This is the energy wealth I want to help you build.

Energy mediocrity

You are getting through your days, but often drawing heavily on yourself to do it. On some days, your energy runs out before your commitments do. You may still be delivering at work while having very little left for yourself by the evening.

I think of this as being frequently overdrawn on your energy account. You can keep things going, but there is little margin for the unexpected, and the things you would love to do may keep getting postponed.

Energy poverty

Low energy is beginning to restrict more of your life. Thinking clearly may take more effort. Work that once felt straightforward may feel demanding, and recovering from an ordinary day may take longer than you expect.

You may also be noticing changes in your health—perhaps thinning hair, brittle nails or unexplained changes in weight. These can have different causes, so I would look at them alongside your wider health picture rather than use them to decide which triangle you belong in. [3,4]

Energy bankruptcy

This is what I call Red Flag Operations: no energy left for choice. You may want to carry on, but feel unable to get up or manage everyday essentials. It can feel as though your body has brought everything to a stop.

Here, we begin by taking the level of depletion seriously. We look at what can be eased, how to bring in support, and how to make nourishment, rest and recovery more possible in your actual life. The starting point needs to fit the capacity you have today.

In my experience, most women who see this model place themselves in energy mediocrity. They are functioning and getting things done, but their energy is inconsistent or takes more managing than they would like. There is enough to maintain the life they have, with limited room for more.

That word catches their attention. These are women who would rarely settle for mediocrity in their work. Seeing it applied to their energy makes them pause. When they see energy wealth as a possibility, they want to know how to move towards it.

Long Haul Energy™ is my work on building and protecting that capacity. I think about it as a continuing movement between using our energy and caring for the body that makes it available. We need to be able to engage with life and then replenish ourselves, adjusting the demands and the support as our needs change.

The self-care system is where I work on that capacity: how you nourish yourself, move and train, rest and recover, and organise the demands of your life. I want you to learn how to recognise your needs and keep adjusting that care as your life changes.

The Long Haul Energy™ cycle is a teaching illustration of effort, replenishment and ongoing care. The aim is dependable energy and capacity over time.

On the energy-bankrupt path, demands keep outpacing the nourishment, recovery and support available to meet them. It can feel as though each day takes something out of you that you are struggling to restore. On the energy-wealthy path, we work on what supports you and what is unnecessarily consuming you, while developing the capacity for the life that matters to you.

A woman leader I worked with helped me see how important it is to understand which part of this movement needs attention.

As we talked, she kept wanting me to move on. Move on, move on. She was impatient to get to the exercises. She wanted to know what to do so she could get on with doing it. That was a very familiar way for her to approach life.

Eventually, I had to explain that more exercise was not what I wanted us to begin with. Taking action was not her difficulty. Relaxing was.

Her days had become lists of things to execute: lists for herself, lists for her family, lists for everyone around her. There was always something to organise, complete or move along. We began working on softening, relaxing and stepping out of that constant task management, including letting go of some of the lists she was running for other people.

She understood what I was getting at, and the change reached through her life. Her relationship with her family changed. She experienced people as kinder wherever she went. The shift affected how she lived among other people, well beyond the exercise she had originally come for.

For her, learning to relax was a starting point. Her story reminds me to look carefully at what each woman actually needs. A willingness to do more can be so well developed that we keep reaching for it, even when recovery is the part that needs attention.

When we work together, I look at your pattern of energy through the day, how you sleep, how you nourish yourself, the movement and training you do, and the circumstances in which it all has to fit. Then we choose where to begin and pay attention to how you respond.

These models help us recognise patterns and discuss what might need to change. They do not tell us the medical cause of exhaustion. Tiredness that persists or interferes with everyday life deserves medical assessment too. [2]

I want you to understand what supports your energy and how to keep caring for it. That matters for the life you are living now, the quality of your presence as a leader and the years in which you still want to contribute.

So, have another look at the four triangles. Where are you in your energy at the moment, and where would you like to be? What would becoming energy wealthy make possible in your life?

About Nina

I’m an exercise physiologist and executive lifestyle strategist with over 30 years of experience helping leaders in their second fifty build a strong, and powerful Age Neutral Body. At 66, the dream is to keep us highly performing so we can keep bringing our gifts to the world for as long as we wish to do so.

I envision a world where we are age neutral, which I define as being in shape to make age irrelevant. It’s not about your age or avoiding death. It’s about coming alive and living fully in a powerful and healthy body no matter what your age.

It’s about a world where you are still dreaming, growing yourself, scaling your business, adventuring, falling in love, having fun and looking and feeling awesome in your fit and truly healthy body. The way I do this is through helping you access what I call Long Haul Energy™.

Influence Has A Body™.

Influence Has a Body™ is where I share my thinking, protocols and work on high-performance aging: how we can restore and build our body’s capacity to support the lives we want to live through our second fifty.

I write for women who have reached the height of their influence at the same time as their bodies have undergone a major hormonal transition. You still love what you do and want to keep going. Or you are contemplating retirement and planning for your next adventure, but the energy, stamina and resilience you once counted on may no longer feel as dependable.

Here, we’ll look at how to restore your body, what may have changed inside your body and how to use the self-care system to recalibrate it—restoring, protecting and increasing your capacity to perform at your best for the next fifty years.

I’ll open the playbooks I’ve spent thirty years building. I want to show you what becomes possible when we work alongside the body—and help you live fully and fall madly in love with yourself and your life.

Help me build what comes next

I’m glad you’re here.

I’m opening a founding membership for readers who want to go deeper with me. Paid members will have access to the self-care library as I build it and be invited to live gatherings where we can explore the work together. I’d love to meet each of you personally and get to know what you are interested in.

I want this work to grow in conversation with the women it is here to serve.

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