Month: September 2023

The Five Emotional Hungers Workbook
Faith Harper
16 pages
https://www.faithgharper.com
https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/artist/dr-faith-g-harper

The Five Emotional Hungers Workbook is a US quarter-sized, black and white workbook format zine about emotional hungers that can trigger or push emotional eating and questions to ask yourself to examine your emotional eating.

The Five Emotional Hungers Workbook starts off with an explainer of what emotional eating is which, depending on your experience with the topic, may or may not seem pretty straightforward. From there we dive in a little deeper to the odd lack of research behind emotional eating given its increasing prevalence in media. Personally, I immediately thought of the scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary in which she is eating a pint of ice cream while singing ‘All By Myself’ to her apartment. Examples abound, and yet real scientific research… not so much.

From there, Dr Harper writes about researching an upcoming book and how doing so helped develop this concept of ‘core emotional hungers’ and how it’s not all tied to depression and anxiety. (I especially honed in on the “confused mood” which I chalked up to restlessness but was intrigued to see refined in definition to a better fit.)

Following this, the five emotional hungers each get a page for a brief explanation, an example, and a blank space for you to reflect and write about if and how that particular emotional hungry has shown up in your life. The reflection continues with more questions that prompt you to think about how you can ‘Reclaim Emotional Satiety’ and gives you space to answer those questions as well.

Something to remember about Dr Harper’s work is that it often contains swearing. I find swearing to be anywhere from something I don’t really notice to being amusing, so it doesn’t bother me one bit. However, I thought I should note it for those who might be unhappy with such words.

Reading this zine both made me appreciate the size of this workbook – I can easily tuck it into my journal and either journal in the zine itself or use the prompts in my regular journal anywhere I care to take it/them – and want more at the same time. (She does have ‘Unf#ck Your Body’, which I am eager to read.) I could write pages and pages around my thoughts on emotional eating – from my own experiences to representation in media to the things people think about a lot less in regards to emotional eating (in my opinion): the celebratory kind of emotional eating. So I am more likely to use this as a springboard rather than anything I would actually write this. That said, you could easily read this on work commute or at a coffee shop without it bringing much attention to itself. Despite its size, the space provided is more than enough for even those who have large handwriting to make some bullet points that could be explored/expanded elsewhere at another time.

As someone who has dealt with disordered eating for most of her life, I greatly appreciate this zine and zines like it. While there can be physical reasons that a person can’t interpret hunger ‘signals’ and/or needs to retrain their body to properly do so, a lot of that still ties in with the mental aspects of eating and self-soothing. I won’t go into my personal history, but I will say that this zine presents a great jumping off point to examine what could be hiding behind your emotional eating habits and tendencies. Definitely pick it up.

My 43 Tips on Life (Five O’Clock Tokyo 4)
Craig Atkinson
8 pages
https://www.instagram.com/fiveoclockzine/

My 43 Tips on Life (Five O’Clock Tokyo 4) is an A5, black and white zine about the rules, tips, tricks and other life lessons Craig has picked up during his past 43 years on the planet.

Maybe it’s the just-passed blue full super moon, or perhaps because it’s the first day of spring here in the land of Oz, but a zine about taking stock of one’s life and reflecting on the lessons one has learned just plain felt right to me.

My 43 Tips on Life starts off with an introduction to this zine and how it’s not meant to be an advice zine. Rather, it’s a celebration. It’s a zine about stepping out of all the things we can get caught up in life in order to check in with yourself and make sure the things you are doing still serve you. I was already eager to read a zine with life pointers, but the motivation behind the making this zine made it all the richer.

From there we get right into it. I found myself smiling with number one being ‘do your most important thing first’, as where else would this point be the most appropriate? It’s advice many of us have heard before, but I enjoyed reading how Craig applied it to his thought processes and his life. The second point – “I’m either all in, or all out. I can’t do half and half.” – had me nodding right along as well. It’s taken me a few years, but I’ve come to realise that about myself as well.

I won’t go through every single point with you, but I loved the variety. Some points were shorter while others were proper big paragraphs. Craig writes about all sorts of things, from food (cooking and consuming) to time itself. Did I agree with every point? Nope. I can’t read on a train. I get motion sickness. But agreeing or agreeing isn’t the point. This is about Craig, and I enjoyed learning more about how he views the world.

And therein lies a huge reason I love perzines: You can learn so much about yourself by learning about other people.

The design of this zine is modest and to-the-point (just like Craig is) with only text in a clear font and nice font size. The typography choices let you focus on the words and their meaning rather than the presentation.

My 43 Tips on Life is not only a zine I enjoyed but one that has inspired me to make one like it. Maybe I’m nosey or just curious about people, but it’s the sort of zine I always appreciate because I always appreciate the fact that so many people have been through so many different things than I have, and there are hidden gems everywhere.

“This isn’t an advice zine, a how-to, self-help, or I’m better than you zine. It’s a celebration of my life for me, and something I felt like sharing.”

Well I, for one, thank you for sharing it, Craig.