Living in South Beach affords many opportunities, interactions and insights. Over the course of my four years on the namesake island of a widely marketed diet, I’ve decided that the real South Beach Diet is not at all about food - but instead – about hunger.

South Beach is a bottomless melting pot. It’s residents hail from diverse lands and personal backgrounds, but there is a commonality. We all come with arms outstretched, mouths agape, and spirits that bare some damage. As an overweight young man whose only concept of worthlessness was his size, my journey of weight loss marked my transformation into a thin person whose only concept of worth was my size. I felt drawn to a place whose concept of worth was just as “thin”, but it took this experience and I took this experience to connect with my own worth.

South Beach is a glossy veneer; a beautiful illusion. Its transient pool of residents find themselves attracted to the illusion as much as to the sense of belonging to a community of real, imperfect, fragile souls. None of this is to say that South Beach is any more or less wonderful than the rest of America. In the absence of the suburban pressure for 2.5 children, an SUV and a mortgage, there is just much more time available to the pursuit of the perfect body, the perfect abs and the realization of a new “Me” generation otherwise out-of-vogue. We are all on a quest for perfection of some sort and this isn’t innate to South Beach – it’s just more visible. Perhaps it’s the heat.

I remember this sense of dismay; weight loss left me at a loss and moving to South Beach had left me with a sense of panic. I felt both unencumbered and intimidated by my own weightlessness and freedom. I strived to be even thinner. I subsisted on a steady diet of gym and Tasti-D-Lite, and slipped further and further into an emotional famine and state of depression as my body became closer to a perfection for which I did hunger.

As we monitored tropical storm Noel and spent time with our new friend Andrea, her own inner storm also began to emerge. It took Andrea’s personal insight and open struggle to awaken my own understanding. Somewhere deep within the residents of this island lies a permanent hurricane season – balmy, oppressive, unstable and magnificent in its own right.

What does one do to buffer the hurricane of emotion that follows a climate of depression? Addiction, inner struggle – anything unresolved becomes much like the tropical weather we experience in South Beach. Everything looks great on the outside despite degrading atmospheric pressure. The depression builds, and despite our best efforts at self-preservation, this system builds enough strength to blow our cover! Ultimately, our stability falters. After the storm, everything is a mess, out of place, needs care and re-building and thus begins “recovery”.

I did not move to South Beach to recover, but instead, to uncover – and I have survived many storms here. I have learned that perfection is an illusion; it is a goal weight that always remains out of reach.

I have learned to turn my palms upward and outward and do my best to internalize a Sanskrit mantra -Om Namah Shivaya: “I honor the divinity that resides within me”. In this heavy life lesson, I have realized my goal weight.

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written by Ms. Trixi, November 07, 2007

Elliot, I'm proud of you for accepting yourself. You are a beautiful person, inside and out! Love ya.

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written by Andrea, November 05, 2007

Elliot -
I'm really happy you have managed to take out of our relationship as much as I have. Thanks for the love and support through all this. Kisses... Andrea

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written by Ca*sie P, November 05, 2007

Once again my sould is touched. Your blogs get better and better every week. It's not just South Bea, but there is a South Beach diet every where.