Linsly Donnelly, 54: Mindset for Health

When you take a sporty mom who has a background in analyzing data, who becomes fascinated in understanding what works for her health, you get someone like Linsly and her treasure trove of metrics. For a 54-year-old woman post-menopause to, in the course of just a few months, be able to put on measurable muscle, gain strength and improve pretty much all her numbers was eye catching. Fortunately for us, she has documented in great detail these changes. Linsly is also someone who started at a high level of fitness, which makes her improvements even more impressive.

Beyond bio-metrics, what deeply interests Linsly is the mindset needed to maximize the tools that work for her, while also enjoying life with her family and friends to the fullest. It is not all about data, it is about how vividly one can live this one life we have been given.

How old are you?
54 (hooray!!)

You have a strong interest in health and wellness. How did that begin?
My initial interest in navigating physical fitness started fairly early — high school and college — from arguably a less mentally healthy lens: dance and modeling. But, although I got interested in what to eat and how to move because of an aesthetic goal, I noticed how much better I felt when I was moving and strong. My mom also showed my brother and I  active hobbies — tennis, jogging — and would come work out with me in college when I was trying to get into the fitness and nutrition lifestyle. We both grew up prioritizing healthy living. Net: the early part of my health and wellness journey was mostly around “eat protein, cut carbs, work out and drink water” and that worked — powering up a robust, and fun, ”work hard, play hard” lifestyle. 

Living in California in early professional life meant running into yoga and meditation philosophies 30 years ago. A series of family mental health rollercoasters emphasized the benefits meditation and yoga could add to navigating mindset; so I trained to teach and explore that after work hours. My husband, Chris, came across similar perspectives in martial arts training, so we opened a yoga studio with a friend in Manhattan Beach to build out that lifestyle alongside our startup businesses / day jobs.

“It wasn’t until we were trying to start a family that I learned the nuance around how much what you specifically ate drove how healthy you were”

It wasn’t until we were trying to start a family that I learned the nuance around how much what you specifically ate (vs calorie counting) drove how healthy you were. For example, my body needed a lot of nutritional fine tuning (more alkaline and less acidic) to healthily carry and deliver a baby — even with medical support. When I understood the details of that advice and focused on specifics around my body and pregnancy, not only did the equation around pregnancy change but I felt more alert and energized. And, of course, recovering from baby-days brought another level of health and nutrition prioritization. I now wish I’d understood how much hormonal health impacts mindset (esp. postpartum) to support better recovery of my mental health in early parenting years. 

We had kids later in life (I was 36 for our first, 40 for our third). We talk a lot with them about how we’re working out and trying to eat healthily so we can be fit now but also still play with them — and their kids — in 30 years. And, since ringing the 40- and 50-year-old bells, the long-term, i.e. lifespan v healthspan for longevity view now frames our choices with even more intentionality.

Health-Tracking Metrics

You have been taking SRW’s Msc¹ Tone and NMN and have been tracking their effect. Could you give us some numbers on what changes you have seen?
Yes! So fun to see metrics move. My tracking mechanisms are via Oura, InsideTracker, and DEXA scan. Goals: increasing muscle comp, maintaining bone health, and improving sleep (quality as well as oxygen intake at night as I was recently diagnosed with mild apnea). These are my metrics after 6 weeks: 

Oura Ring metrics:
Heart Rate Variability: 58 now vs 48 6 weeks ago
Sleep efficiency: 93 now vs 91 6 weeks ago
Resting Heart Rate: 52 now vs 53 6 weeks ago
Activity score: 88 now vs 85 6 weeks ago
Steps: 10500 now vs 10000 6 weeks ago
Calorie burn: 2300 now vs 2100 6 weeks ago
Walking equivalent: 10 now vs 8 miles 6 weeks ago

DEXA scan (same scan time 9:30am):
Weight: 125 now vs 127.8 6 weeks ago
Body comp (fat %): 20.8 now vs 22.4 6 weeks ago — most change in upper body / arms / (trunk, then android, then gynoid)
Bone density: top zone for all metrics both times 

Other:
Grip: 64 now vs 58 6 weeks ago
Hang time: 1 min 21 sec now vs 1 min 11 sec 6 weeks ago

Are these changes what you were expecting?
Yes! Looking to continue these + mouthguard for managing sleep apnea. One thing I loved about SRW was how easy it was to do. Sounds trivial, but a small powder in my morning water was so easy and the upside of being able to track muscle comp change relatively quickly is energizing. I already had a focus on strength training so being able to amplify that easily with trackability makes it compelling to continue.

“We are at least now lucky to be learning explicitly how to best try and impact each longevity lever with ever-evolving tools”

How do you think these would work with other women?
I think they’re great tools to add into a program underway around food, workouts and mindset work.

The more we are learning about longevity — especially with a lens toward women’s health / peri- and post-menopause — the more important customizable tools are to help build pillars like muscle tone, bone strength, balance and sleep. It’s a little frustrating — and disappointing — how the compound effects of aging seem to be even a bit harder on all fronts post menopause. But, it’s reality and we are at least now lucky to be learning explicitly how to best try and impact each longevity lever with ever-evolving tools.

Things like SRW’s supplements to support for muscle comp make the battle feel a little less uphill.

What is your goal as far as health?
To be as mentally and physically fit as I can be in order to best engage with and support people and initiatives I love.

“I’m most interested in the practices and support we can all access around building out our mental health”

Do you have any concerns that are particular to you?
I’m most interested in the practices and support we can all access around building out our mental health — maximizing the mindset muscles.

I turned 50 a few months before Covid arrived. Sitting with the mental health waves magnified in that period flipped a switch in me to understand the opportunities in and mechanics of building — with authenticity — a Positive Mindset. Luckily, we live in the land of trails and lift rides so I was able to consume upwards of 150 books around the practices, neurochemistry and science-backed levers to support maximizing mindset. This question is the one most central to me around how we can own and harness how we go into each day. An analogy for me would be around how we’ve all learned the value of nutrition and exercise. We don’t have to be 5-star chefs or Olympic athletes to really benefit from the upsides from eating well and working out. 

Give us an idea of what your exercise regime is.
I love the early morning workouts as much as I can. In a week, I’ll get in 2-3 strength sessions, 3-4 zone 2 cardio events and a few HIIT sessions at Beau Collective — I so love the fun and community there! It’s a dance party at 6am. I also tend to add in smaller yoga sessions, a hike or mellow bike and love an after dinner walk. And, if I can swing it, I love to join my friend Beth at a Tuesday night dance class at Dance Tech! I’m reviewing my routine now, though; Jen Wagner and Team Prosper re: women’s longevity levers and Peter Attia’s work re: Centenarian Decathlon exercise means I’m due a refresh. Stay tuned, as I’d love to share lessons learned for women around programming workouts and life roadmaps with these POVs in mind.

How do you apply your background as an analyst and strategist to your own health?
Ha! I think it’s a little bit of a blessing and a curse — once a consultant, always a consultant — in that I love to absorb loads of information about a question or problem set, review it, and try to boil it down to a series of 2×2 graphs and bullet points. In sharing my most recent focus around Building a Positive Mindset to Maximize Longevity Levers, I’m something of a synthesizer meets megaphone … looking to find the venn diagram or overlap where all the various experts agree on what supports our mental and physical health and amplify those levers so they’re accessible to people with no time and too much to do; aka all of us. 

I’ve had a chance to work in a few contexts — the wine industry and kids’ media and tech — where being able to create a broad database with a series of filters and expertise metrics can help people easily and quickly get to answers that best match their priorities. Building out a framework around “what can I — specifically — do” to maximize something like “Thrival” (i.e. the amount of time we are savoring and enjoying being alive) really energizes me right now.

What are the things you are learning from your kids?
So much. Patience, forgiveness, adaptability, humor, playfulness, comfort in being in This Specific Moment and, as they get older, all kinds of ways in which “I’m not cool” equates to a wonderful comfort with being unhip and uncool. 

“My focus is around working with women to unlock the power of their mindset to work for them”

I understand you have a new initiative around women’s performance and health. Could you tell us about that?
Thank you, yes.

My focus is around working with women to unlock the power of their mindset to work for them in order to power up this next phase, their next…Next.

Recently, we were able to gather in workshops called Feed The Wolf (a reference from the Native American parable) to review a synthesis of Mindset and Longevity expertise and work through personalized roadmaps and work plans on which of the myriad of tools best fit individuals’ goals and lifestyle priorities.

We’re so fortunate to have health systems and information around longevity — and the possibility to live better, longer. Still, at first, it can be overwhelming to learn — at 50ish —that you have a 50% shot at living beyond 100. Doing what? Feeling how? With whom? As people move through the full-throttle phase of work, and perhaps parenting, there can be a sense of wide open space with questions around purpose and resources and a fuzzy — or non existent — canvas or roadmap. 

So in the Feed The Wolf workshops we explore the levers to build and fuel Mindset in service of supporting health practices to make that Longevity Potential feel energizing — with a sense of peace and patience in the process.

Net is: I’m excited to enable people to reframe 50+ from “aging” to relishing a second youth… a Wise Youth, of sorts. 

What are some of the things that you feel some women are misinformed about as per health and performance?
All of us are learning to rebalance familiar health levers like sleep and strength training. What may feel new for women are ideas emerging around hormone support and workout cadence that change post menopause and the criticality of getting enough protein (which is often much, much more, at 1.0 -1.5 grams per body weight lb, than most consume daily) to support healthy aging. And, sadly for me as an avid Chardonnay fan, the more we learn about the long-term effects of alcohol on brain health and wellbeing, the harder it is to not re-evaluate how drinking impacts mindset and longevity. Exploring alcohol’s effects on emotions adds another layer to the complex relationship between alcohol consumption and overall well-being.    

We will continue to learn more as we all age into this new longevity canvas. So, amplifying a learner’s mindset as we traverse this relatively groundbreaking terrain will be as much of a tool as any supplement or treatment. What’s given now may change and that flywheel around new ideas and shifting foundations can’t deter us from continuing to update and re-map our personalized programs as we go. 

You are one of those people who climb up the mountain here in the winter, in the dark, with headlamps, and then board down. What is that like? Who do you do it with?
Mmm..Climb…really means huff and puff while being dragged up the mountain with women way stronger than I. I love the wide open skies in our mountain life — and something about the cool, clear winter extraordinarily lights up those skies. When I get a chance to skin up with inspirations like Allie, Eyee, Carolyn, Justine and more, it’s stunning. My cardio strength is my governor and their coaching and encouragement to get to the top — stunning and glowing with the sunrise — makes all the huffing and puffing so worth it.

“Music is our heartbeat”

Tell us about your family’s relationship to live music.
Music is our heartbeat. My husband, Chris, and I both track various artists to channel threads of our inner poet dancers incarnate in rockstars.

We flagged this year as one to prioritize seeing live musicians as much as possible while we can — a bit of a hangover from Covid where we were reminded how much we took for granted in-person moments.

I had an experience decades ago in early professional life where I had wanted so badly to go see the Crash Test Dummies in LA. I had tickets, but it was a weeknight when work was full throttle and I traded off going to the show in order to work on a late-night deadline. Within weeks news hit that Crash Test Dummies had actually been in a car crash and were no longer able to play. For years, I would always tell myself to get out and do things and see things when I had the chance or else it would be a moment like missing that concert. Fortunately, 10 years later, Crash Test Dummies came back on the music scene and I was able to see them again, but that minor moment and monster bigger ones like Covid are reminders to get out and see things while you can. 

My husband has seen Bruce Springsteen upwards of 80 times and this year we made sure to get out and see him together as well as bring our kids for a few shows. Similarly, I had the great opportunity, thanks to my friend Susan who was able to get hands on tickets, to go see Taylor Swift with our daughter. I think that’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments. We have a few more opportunities this year: Sabrina Carpenter, Bruno Mars, Beyoncé and Madonna. And, that’s one of the best things about summer in Park City: so much live music that surrounds us.

What are the 3 non-negotiables in your life?
1. Time to connect with and savor family and friends.
2. Exercise and sleep.
3. Quiet time to meditate, reflect, and recharge.

SRW is offering AGEIST readers 20% off all products with code “AGEIST20” at checkout.

Connect with Linsly:
Top Flight Ventures
Prosper
Beau Collective