Battle With Bulimia: West Point Graduate’s Fight To Live

By Nancy K. Crevier

Never in a thousand years as a child playing in the waters of Lake Zoar near her family’s summer cottage did Jenifer Beaudean dream that three decades later she would be planning to share her story of an addiction that nearly claimed her life with an audience at the C.H. Booth Library.

Ms Beaudean, author of Whatever The Cost: One Woman’s Battle To Find Peace With Her Body, published this past March by Quiet Waters Publications, is a graduate of West Point Academy, has served in the US Army, earned her MBA from the University of Michigan, and is currently a successful businesswoman in the marketing communications industry in Connecticut. She is an artist and a writer.

She is also a bulimic, and she will be discussing that subject with listeners at a book talk and signing at the C.H. Booth Library, Tuesday, November 2, at 7 pm, in the Meeting Room.

“Bulimia Nervosa is a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by a cycle of bingeing and compensatory behaviors such as self-induced vomiting designed to undo or compensate for the effects of binge eating,” according to the National Eating Disorder Association (NationalEatingDisorders.org). It is estimated that one to two percent of adolescent and adults in the United States are bulimic, with at least 80 percent of bulimics being women.

Chronic binging and purging can lead to a damaged digestive system, electrolyte imbalance, irregular heart beat, possible rupture of the esophagus, tooth decay and staining, irregular bowel issues, and gastric rupture, and possible death through complications of these issues. Depression is not uncommon for those struggling with bulimia.

On the surface, Whatever The Cost might appear to chronicle the four years that Ms Beaudean spent as a cadet of the 11th class of women to be admitted to West Point Academy, with an addendum of her descent into and recovery from bulimia.

“Bulimia is not easy to talk about,” said Ms Beaudean, in an interview at her Southbury home, Tuesday, October 25. “It’s not a happy prospect, talking about gorging on food and vomiting it back up again to feel better about yourself. It’s very emotional,” she said.

The reason that the focus of the book is on her years at West Point, said Ms Beaudean, is two-fold. “I wanted to show the pattern of progression to that drastic decision to become bulimic,” she said, emphasizing that bulimia was a decision she made. “I decided that day that I would be thin, no matter what I had to do, no matter if it killed me. And it nearly did,” said Ms Beaudean.

By focusing gently on her loving family and late father, whose unwitting comments planted seeds of discontent with his daughter’s weight — never in the range of obesity, even at her top weight of just over 150 pounds on her 5’ 4” medium frame — the social environment of the 1980s, surrounded by magazines portraying unrealistically skeletal models and filled with diet articles, and the harsh years at West Point, during which cadets like herself were subjected to humiliation and shame due to strict weight level requirements, she points out a “progression of small hurts that led up to [my decision to become bulimic].”

She was a junior at West Point the day she became bulimic, and it was an addiction that haunted her for the next 13 years, through her marriage and divorce, through her years at the University of Michigan, and up until the day her sister confronted her and her mother demanded she return home and get professional help.

“The last 18 months of my addiction, I was vomiting four or five times a day. I was skinny as a rail. It is amazing I didn’t die,” Ms Beaudean said. She realized, when confronted by her family, that she was not living the life she had planned. She was unhappy, and she was sick. Her life revolved around binge eating and purging, and was filled with shame about this huge secret.

An Emotional Addiction

When she started purging at West Point, she soon became aware that she was not alone. “I suspected there were others who were bulimic. No one talked about it, of course. But it takes one to know one,” she said.

Bulimia is an extremely emotional addiction, with roots in control. “Everything else in your life is out of your control, so you start to think that your weight is the one thing you will control, no matter what. Binging [consuming large amounts of food in a short period of time] is about the need to be filled, emotionally. Purging is about getting rid of bad feelings,” she said.

Amazingly, she said, she managed to masterfully hide her addiction from her husband during eight years of marriage, and up until this book was published, no one in her professional life suspected her history.

Her second desire, through writing this book, is to show that bulimia is everywhere. “People don’t expect to find eating disorders at the level of a pristine environment like West Point,” she said. “To get into West Point you have to have the best academic grades, the best health, be the best of the best. You are the cream of the crop. There is a lot of pressure,” she said, so it is not surprising that girls would buckle, particularly at that time, under the strict weight guidelines. “The average American woman today is 5’ 4” tall and weighs 140 pounds,” stated Ms Beaudean. At the time she entered West Point, she barely met the minimum requirement of 134 pounds, and struggled constantly to remain at that acceptable weight.

Ms Beaudean has been in recovery for eight years. Unlike many other addictions, a bulimic cannot give up the one thing that creates the addiction. “You have to eat to survive. You can’t simply stop eating,” she pointed out. She was ready to be helped when her family reached out, and it was through individualized therapy and hospitalization at the Renfrew Center in Wilton that she relearned her relationship with food.

Eating disorder specialists believe that early intervention increases chances for recovery.

“Bulimia is never cured. Recovery is an everyday thing and is the hardest thing I have ever done, harder than being at West Point,” said Ms Beaudean.

To write about her experiences was daunting, she said, and she admitted that had she read a book like her own when in the throes of bulimia, she would not have heeded the message. “You have to be ready,” she said.

The message she wants to convey when she speaks, and to those who read her book, is one of compassion. “The message of love is what I put out there. I love you, and I want you to get well and live a happy life.”

Raising Awareness

Her book and her talk is for anyone who lives with an eating disorder, who knows or suspects that they know someone with an eating disorder, or who wants to find out more about the addiction and treatment. It is for those curious about the culture of West Point Academy in the 1980s.

“It is never condemning,” she said. “I know there are so many people out there at their wits’ end. This is, I hope, about raising awareness and starting a dialogue. You can’t live the magnificent life you were meant to if you are purging five times a day. You can’t be obsessed and sick, and live a wonderful life. But,” she stressed, “you can get well.”

Her mother now lives in that Lake Zoar summer cottage year around, her sister and family lives nearby, and she is once more splashing happily with nephews and nieces in the waters of Lake Zoar. It is a blessing, she said, to be with family and to be living a life filled once more with adventure and happiness.

“I wonder,” Ms Beaudean said, “what the next 20 years will bring?”

Jenifer Beaudean will speak at the C.H. Booth Library, Tuesday evening, November 2, from 7 to 9, in the Meeting Room. Copies of her book, Whatever The Cost: One Woman’s Battle To Find Peace With Her Body will be available for purchase and signing by the author.

To find out more about bulimia and other eating disorders, visit www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.