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You're listening to the thriving lawyer with Kathleen Brenner. Are you a lawyer who's feeling burnt out but you want more in life?
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Do you want to live a purpose driven life that is filled with more meaning and joy, a life where you can absolutely thrive as a lawyer but not at the expense of everything else. So it is important to you. If you are, you've come to the right place. I'm a lawyer, a coach, a dreamer and a change maker. My mission is to help you grow and thrive, to embody your values and strengths as both a lawyer and human being and to expand what is possible for you. So you can create a more joyful, fulfilling and impactful life than you've ever previously imagined possible.
0:51
Today, I'm interviewing Megan Dyson. So Megan lives in Adelaide, where she operates her sole practice as an environmental lawyer and policy consultant. She has more than 25 years experience advising federal and state agencies across Australia on management of water and natural resources. With a special focus on water law and governance in the multi jurisdictional complexity of the Murray Darling Basin. Megan was engaged by the Australian government to help design and draft the Water Act 2007, the Murray Darling Basin agreement 2008 And the Murray Darling Basin Plan 2012 She continues to advise on implementation of those instruments. Other areas of work include water law and policy outside of the basin, and natural resources management generally, in 2020, Megan decided to finally pursue her long held passion for health and nutrition. And by 2022, she'd written and published a book on a healthy eating habits and completed a cert for in nutrition. mother of two young men who are both still at home. Megan enjoys her spare time gardening and working walking with her husband and the family dog Cesar. She's reaping the mental and physical benefits of a now three year twice weekly yoga habit. And it's also recently taken up jujitsu. Welcome, Mike, Megan. Such a pleasure to have you. And I'm really excited to have this conversation today. It's been a long time coming. Because I've wanted to have ever since I heard you speak about your, your book hand Tips for Lawyers, probably a year ago now. So super happy to have this discussion. But why don't we just kick right on into it? So, Megan, what's, you know, really evident is from that introduction is that you are such a highly experienced lawyer. And you've now created this career where you're working part time as a lawyer and running your own practice. As well as being, you know, having written this book. And being a nutrient qualified nutritionist and author, you know, it's quite an unusual combination. So I'd love to hear a little bit about how that all came about.
3:08
It isn't unusual curriculum, though, I guess. But it's surprisingly well matched. You know, I think as lawyers, our mindset is very much, you know, search for truth, in strong foundations, I think. And, you know, that world of health and wellness is just rife, I think, with misinformation and deceit, and there's some things that really, really irritate me, and I can't be rich that people will take advantage of others ignorance, or their quest for health in the way that's happening. And, you know, maintaining a healthy body composition is the single most important thing we can do to avoid, you know, chronic health conditions later in life. So, in spite of that, it's just become this complete playing field for dishonesty, and something that really irritates me. And I just thought, you know, I just don't need all this obfuscation and self interest, I can do better than that. So Nutrition has been, you know, a long held interest, and I'd say even passion of mine for, you know, at least 25 years. And I just eventually, I guess, the ideas for the book have been rattling around in my head. But with work as you'd appreciate with a lawyer, there's always another job and when I finished this kind of finish that so COVID board round a slight lull in my work in as much as I didn't have to travel to see clients anymore, which was fantastic. Because most of my clients are interstate, not in South Australia. So it cut down on a lot of travel time. And I thought, you know, I do have a bit of time to get serious about this. And so yeah, I just sort of launched into writing. And before I knew it, I had a book. And then from there, you know, started massaging that and, you know, fiddling around with what the focus and structure of that would be and yeah, so it's been an evolving thing. But I think although completely different From law, law has been a fantastic foundation for, you know, heavy scientific research, writing, communicating all those things.
5:12
Was there a trigger? Like you what's very evident there? Is that changing COVID. And there was that expanse of time that some of us were able to experience in that. But you know, you talked about the misinformation, essentially, that is out there around this area. Was there sort of a trigger point or something that that happened that where you were like, right, this is it, I have to kind of take this forward?
5:35
Yeah, it's funny, you should say that, actually. So my husband was diagnosed with type one diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease about 15 years ago. And so that meant that we, you know, suddenly were thrown into the situation really understanding Well, what eating carbohydrates does to your body in the types of strain that we put on our body, when we eat the wrong sort of foods to make you realize, we are just not built for a high GI, you know, high sugar load. So there was that going on in the background. So I've become really quite knowledgeable, and done a lot of research guys walking through the city with a friend of mine, who's also a lawyer, and she has long been discontent with her weight. And she's, you know, goes on diets and reads books from time to time. And she said, I'm sick of those books. But there's just all that guff. You know, there's this storytelling and that, you know, I wish I just get to the point and someone, I wish there was a book that just told me what to do. And I thought, you know, what, I am no storyteller. But I can certainly write clearly. And I can tell people, you don't have to cut through the noise. It's pretty simple, you know, and I thought I can do that I can write that book. And so that's when I started putting together material which evolved into a book. And yeah, I can do that. So it was that moment of a friend's frustration with years of, you know, buying the misinformation that guff and the single solutions and celery detox juicing thing. That really spurred me into thinking I can do much better than that, and actually help people with sensible advice that's science based, non fatty, and is going to work in the long term.
7:18
So we'll get into it a little bit later in our conversation in terms of the direct tips and, and ideas, lawyers, but I'm really interested in this idea myself. No, in fact, it's the whole rationale for the podcast. And the the, the coaching that I do is this idea of the the thriving lawyer. And to me, that means a lawyer who's thriving not just as a lawyer, but the rest of their life, which is where what you're doing is so interesting. And even before we get to the, you know, the the actual, the subject matter of, of the food in the diet, it's even interesting to kind of consider what you've just told us around how you how you have complimented your legal practice by going into this nutrition space. And more and more when I am talking to people, I do hear examples of these kinds of like, I think a great phrase is a portfolio career, where you start to have your areas of expertise, but you don't just stick to, you know, one area of law because with this recognition, I think that the more interests and skills we have, and the different ways to serve, that it can actually increase our satisfaction, and our own well being ourselves. I'm just interested in, in what thoughts you have about that, and how writing the book has impacted you and your own kind of well being. Yeah.
8:48
You know, the study of law and the practice of being a lawyer does actually have a lot of synergies with non legal activities. You know, we are critical thinkers we write, we communicate, we read, we search for meaning, and as I said, solid foundations. And so those those skills and interests can flow over into completely different areas such as the nutrition and yet, you know, obviously good nutrition makes a healthy person healthy person is gonna make a healthier lawyer. So there's, there's a great deal of crossover, but pursuing this side is has really helped me embrace and really get to enjoy the creative side of my, my personality, which previously was really unexpressed in gardening, which I love, going to teaching my children, that sort of thing. That's a creative endeavor. But, you know, after 30 years or more of writing legal advice, which of course I always, you know, it's pragmatic, it's helpful, it's well focused, but it's, you know, it has to be said it's dry, to be able to write creative way for a completely different audience about something that I'm really very passionate about was just a wonderful, a joyful, creative, exciting time it was, it was great. And that the only difficulty really, in marrying up with my legal work was that I do tend to get completely immersed in what I'm doing, whether that's a legal job, or researching and writing about nutrition. So I had to really, when I was writing the book, segregate my days very clearly right now, seven till 11 In the morning, so that's nutrition after 11 Until you know, however long it takes. That's my sort of my day job. So yes, the two things are synergistic, in a sense, but I can't, I can't contain those two completely different topics in my brain, same time, so I've had to segregate my day. But from a personal perspective, yeah, it's brought me a great deal of joy. Creativity, it's been it's great. Yeah.
11:04
So what's really clear there is, you know, the fact that our rational skills, all those skills that we have in our lawyering can have that direct impact. But on the other hand, you know, there are real challenges and obstacles when you're trying to pursue such, you know, still very different fields, as you say. In terms of, you know, dividing that kind of time and being quite disciplined in, in where your focus is, what other suggestions would you have for lawyers who are trying to grapple with, perhaps in interests that they have themselves, I mean, I'm certainly interested to hear, because it's a key challenge I have with my own coaching work, in terms of being able to prioritize and achieve what I want to achieve in both like, when my lawyering is so demanding to?
11:57
Look, there is no easy answer to that. And I think most lawyers, only to, you know, intimate with that sense of having far too much to do, and not enough time to do it. So often, you know, very complex work, particularly, you know, you and I work in government, the work is, sometimes it's highly political, it's always time pressured, it's frequently very, very complex, when you work in an inter jurisdictional area is even more complex and more political. So it's not easy to scrape time out of that sort of agenda, to do something for yourself. So my tip really would be after, you know, 30 years of lawyering took me too long, really, to try to carve out that time for myself and say, it really is important. For your own being, even though you might identify extremely, as I did, and still do with, you know, being a lawyer, and being the person that requires being the perfectionist, always been right, because you know, of all the professions, you know, we are paid to be perfect, we are paid to be perfect every time and it's exhausting and stressful. And I think we really need to give ourselves a bit of grace, not in our legal work, but to scrape up time in nonlegal endeavors to allow ourselves to not be perfect, and not be right all the time. And I guess my tip would be, it's really worth it's worth it. It's worth, it's worth doing that. And I think you need to have the confidence that it really is worth cultivating the non legal side of who you are.
13:44
Absolutely, that's one of the things I've talked about quite a bit. And in fact, I think the very last episode that I recorded was all about our identity as lawyers because I think we have a tendency to hold ourselves and hold our identity so fully as lawyers that it can crack crowd out the other endeavors. Thank you for that, because I think it's also important to kind of acknowledge those perfectionist tendencies. And I would just add into that to that. One of the problems that you face is that standard that perfectionism, the standard is always just above where you are, no matter what effort you put in, and it's an ever moving target that I think is one of the actual challenges that we need to be addressing, as well in the profession.
14:31
Absolutely. That's a really good observation, actually, that that perfectionism, it's always just slightly out of reach, and you just continue striving and never meeting it because we keep raising our own expectations of ourselves. You know, it's a good thing for our clients, I guess, isn't it? But yes, there is that x that expectation I think from others within the profession and pretty much from from ourselves within that within ourselves.
15:01
So, moving on from those kinds of challenges, you know, you've really, we've now kind of really covered off the challenges and benefits, though of kind of taking this approach to your career and how you spend your time now. But I'd like to move on now to the actual book. And you've already touched a little bit on what led you down the nutrition path, because the frustration of your friend and the misinformation and guff as you, as you kind of said earlier, but I'd love to hear a little more about that process to five for life, and the overall philosophy and principles that that underpin it.
15:44
So I guess the ideas, as they started developing, you know, a reasonably concrete form maybe, you know, five or so, five or more years ago, and I think, why is it that so many people around me are developing, you know, a very unhealthy body composition and their, their, you know, their health trajectory? Is not, you know, hopeful one, it's not a healthy one, what's going on here, people from all walks of life. But around my age, I mean, what, what's going on there, and it didn't take me long to observe that I, I eat in a different way from other people, I don't eat the same things. So I have a different mindset about food. And I've been on a diet. And I started thinking, you know, it's not obviously, it's obviously not just what we eat, even though that is the focus of all these diets, and all the talk is on what you eat. And obviously, that's important, but it's not the whole picture, you know, we are how we are now the sum total of all of our habits throughout our life, no one develops an unhealthy body composition overnight. It's something that occurs over many years as a result of habits. And you don't change habits by going on a diet. And there's a lot of research showing how dangerous diets actually are, both physically and mentally. In the longer term. They're very destructive. In dieting, it's about deprivation, you know, loss, punishment, self loathing, and if so many very, very unhealthy things go with dieting and the mindset that that can generate. And it was clear to me there's, there's other things. So it's not just what we eat, it starts with that. A mindset or an attitude, you might call it a relationship with food and eating if you like, and an attitude towards yourself, and the place that holds in your life, food and eating. And so the philosophy that underpins fire for life is very much a holistic one. Because being a healthy weight, or healthy body composition, really being healthy is about changing the way you think about food and eating. And I distilled that down to five key areas. So you know, hence, five for life. And the first one is, I think I sort of have have alluded to, it's the right mindset. And you might call that the right reason, if you like so our relationship with food, often that's not even at a conscious level. So the first step first principle of fire for life goes into delving into really identifying what is the issue for each individual person? Why are they overeating or eating for the wrong reasons eating the wrong food, what what's going on, deep inside, but also challenging conceptions you have about what you should look like, you know, we have very deeply ingrained in us directions from societal norms about what we should look like that's not necessarily healthy for everybody. So it's really important to inquire deep within yourself to see what are your what is your sense of self? What part of your body image is connected with that? Are your are your thoughts valid? Or have they been put on you by other people or by society? So that's the first part of healthy eating is that healthy relationship with food and with your own body? The second one is what I call rat time. And, you know, you've probably heard about circadian rhythm. It's been in the media a lot now since I published the book funnily enough, but when I did publish it, I realized there's an enormous amount of research I'm an avid breakfast eater and I don't eat late at night. And there's a lot of research good, solid research starting from about 2003. evidencing that for optimum health. We need to be eating earlier in the day, so not late at night. It brings me joy to bring all your Eating forward a little bit so that you're having breakfast and finishing eating early in the evening. And in fact having about 80% of your intake before about four o'clock in the afternoon, the studies are solid on that. But the funny thing is it takes about 17 years on average, for clinical research to make its way into clinical practice or into mainstream, that's a hell of a long. So, I mean, taking it as average is, you know, difficult. I mean, there have been some examples like HIV AIDS, you know, research and therapies, were very quick, because of the imperative behind them. Similarly, of course, with with issues around COVID. But in the general mainstream, that's how long things take. And then so it's been interesting for me to see since that book was published, there being quite a lot in the media about the importance of eating in sync with your circadian rhythm. So that's your internal body clock. Yes, your body does know what time it is right down to the minute at a cellular level even. So yes, it does know what time it is when you're eating. And at circadian rhythms drive metabolism, if you'd like to regulate the hormones that that regulate metabolism, metabolism, sorry. So it's very important eat at the right time. And, you know, at a very broad level, that's early, early, finish late. And there's a whole chapter in five for life about eating at the right time. The other part of eating at the right time eating when you're hungry, and recognizing hunger, we frequently don't eat because we're hungry, we eat for all sorts of reasons. And that is fine. It's not a bad thing. But it's likely that when you'll be eating when you're not hungry, or if you don't stop soon enough, that extra energy intake is going to be stored as fat, that that's not necessarily a disastrous thing, but it's setting you off on a particular trajectory, which may well end up being an unhealthy one. The third part of the five is about food. And of course, yes, what you put in your mouth does matter. But it's far simpler than what we're led to believe. Because of course, you're not going to, you know, say your celery juice or your supplements or your crazy weird diet. Unless you say you've got a single solution, it's about what you eat, you know, what you eat is important, but it's simple. It's much simpler than any, you know, diet booksellers are going to have you have you believe. And basically, it means a lot more vegetables, the right amount of good quality protein for your own body weight. And there's specific calculations around how much that is enough good quality fat, and I'm talking about fat from vegetables, fish, nuts, and seeds, less much less of the seed oils. Plenty of fiber, a lot of fiber, that most people have very fiber deficient diets these days. And so overall, you look at that big picture, it means whole food, real food, more of that, and less much, much less of the processed and ultra processed foods. That's it, it's not complicated. You can be vegan, vegetarian, you know, omnivore, Mediterranean, whatever you like. As long as though that focus is there and plenty of veg, the right amount of good quality protein, good quality fats, plenty of fiber. That's it. So the fourth area is at the right drink. So drinking is often sort of left off to the side, most people aren't drinking enough water. And there's a lot of studies about the importance of drinking sufficient water. And that means until your urine runs pale, you know, to be blunt about it, that's going to vary between individuals, you know, depending on weather and activity levels and other factors, but it's around three liters a day. And lots of people are not having anything anything like like that. Eating or drinking the right sort of drink also means not drinking, not drinking and calories. So don't don't go drinking juices, soft drinks, flavored milks, you know, all of those types of drinks have a significant amount of added, you know, energy, excess energy. But also, I have to say the sugar word, you know, there's a lot of sugar which is is not a healthy thing. And this principle that bad luck also looks at caffeine intake. Caffeine can be good. It also can obviously disturb sleep and raise cortisol levels. So it's something that has been very beneficial, particularly when you're a lawyer and you've got you know, time pressures, but
24:27
you know, be wary about it. Alcohol is the other one of course, you know, it is technically a poison that our body tries very hard to read from our bodies as soon as we ingest it. But you know, I do drink myself. And it's something to be aware of, you know, in a healthy eating approaches to really moderate alcohol intake. The last of the five is eating the right way. And that means eating mindfully so we often got grown or gobble down our people Often our food, because we're in a hurry, and you know, I've spent far too many lunches at my desk for breakfast at my desks, you know, dinners at my desk, it is not a healthy way to eat, it does tend to make us eat faster. And there are a number of studies showing that leaner people tend to eat slower and larger, people carrying a lot more fat attending to eat faster. So it doesn't mean that every fast Eater is going to be carrying too much body fat doesn't mean every slow eater, it's going to be lean. But when you look at risk, and lawyers know that risk, the odds are that if you're eating fast, you're going to be putting on too much probably right. There are all sorts of reasons, both psychological and physiological for that, and I'll go into those reasons in my book. So I know this sounds really, really gross, but true to Let's move. And also be mindful and take, take a moment to consider where your food came from. If you eat animals, as I do, consider that, you know, a life has been given up for what you're eating, although, you know, that might sound overly dramatic. That's the truth. And it pays for our mental and physical health to consider where has our food come from. The other part of mindful eating is just simply the physical act of seeing smelling, feeling the tape, texture, the taste of our food, we're really paying attention to it as we eat it. And we can't do that when we're, you know, doing our emails at the same time or eating too quickly to notice. So they're the five principles for healthy eating habits. And they formed the first sort of five chapters of the book, the remainder, look at other factors that affect our health and our weight. But that's the gist of the approach. It's very much a holistic one, trying to engender a healthy relationship with food, which plays such a central part, you know, in our lives, obviously, you know, we we eat to stay alive, but we also eat as a social function and eating should be a joyful, non threatening, non stressful activity. And that's what I hope to achieve through the book.
27:14
Wow, that is such a great. No, that's absolutely. So there's absolutely so much in there. And, you know, as you were going through, that, you actually triggered a whole lot of memories have spent a lot of time studying and living in Italy. And what struck me from what you said is, you know, over there, people are obsessed about food, food is talked about so much. People seem to eat a lot, because they you know, the course is through the through the lunch and the day, they probably don't get breakfast, right? Because they do have a sweet tooth in the morning. But overall, that aside, what what I noticed when I was living, there was this reverence, and an understanding. And there was often that thoughtfulness because there was the emphasis on the quality of the ingredients, the freshness of the food. So even though there was a huge cultural component, and often a lot of food, it didn't seem like there was much overeating going on. Does that resonate with you that kind of observation? Like it seemed like it was really healthy?
28:22
Yes, yes, absolutely. And when you do, you know, have an attitude of reverence, as you put it towards food, and that deeply social part of it, you're gonna be tending to pay more attention to cooking, which means you're using whole foods. And that's absolutely at the core of the what to eat part is eating whole foods. So if you're cooking from scratch, as you know what you've described me, people who revere their food, they're actually making it and paying attention to it, it's far more likely to be Whole Foods and come out of the packet. It's not processed, and then alone Ultra process. And that's a very, very healthy way to eat, both mentally, mentally and physically.
29:02
So you know, the other thing that struck me from the explanation of the five principles that you just gave, thinking about lawyers was the fact that you know, so often, there is this, you know, the work deadlines, or the feeling that we should actually be stuck at our desk, even though all the research shows that if we actually just got up at lunchtime, took the lunch break, got away from our screen, we'd probably be part from being a lot healthier in terms of what we're eating, but also have increased wellbeing because we've actually had the break plus increased productivity because all of those, that productivity actually flows from doing those other things, right. So I'm curious about it because I see this as a key challenge. Like I see lawyers so often, who won't leave their desk because they feel guilty as if they're not doing their job properly, or somehow meeting professional standards for even taking half an hour to actually get away from the desk and Eat properly. So from my point of view, I think that that's a key barrier. I'm just curious to you as to how you see that and the challenges that lawyers might have, and how we can perhaps to try and challenge that and actually create change for ourselves.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
