Well, howdo.

Hi. I'm Luke and I'm from Sydney, Australia, rather than Sydney, Nova Scotia. Opera House, kangaroos, dropbears... etc.

I've been around here for a while but haven't really used the forums, so aim to rectify that. That said, I work in magazines, so it'll either be lots of posting or none, depending on work... or procrastination.

I've lost a bit of weight from where I was a couple of years ago - a good 10-15kg heavier - but have a bunch to go. I'm an amateur taiko player, so a lot of the work on weight and core fitness that I'm doing is to try and fit in with that: it's a very physical style of music. Anyone else a fan? Need to be in much better shape as there's a chance the group I play with might be playing in a competition in Japan in August... not long.

So yeah, my brother seems to be getting pretty good results from keeping track of the food - I just have to make it much more a part of my regimen. I've been pretty good at it previously but recently had one of those week-long periods where, for a couple of reasons (cold, tiredness, general Monty Burns-style bah) I ended up skipping the gym and checking in. But guilt got the better of me, so here I am again. Again, Jim seems to have pretty good results from tracking his food - we've both been relatively active (though he does a bunch of crazy tabata stuff) and it seems that it's been the calorie scorekeeping that's prompted the weightloss, not the change in exercise. So here we go.

Ideally, I'd like to be fit enough to start tackling something like CrossFit, but that seems a bit of a way off. Gotta get more of a handle on my asthma first - it's not put-me-in-hospital debilitating but I can feel it twinge if I'm full out. (Though selfishly I must say I want my breathing to improve so I can not suck at playing the shakuhachi, or Japanese flute... priorities, right?)

So yeah. Hello, even though I've been around a bit.