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There are a lot of places to turn when your life is in turmoil. Cathy Alter chose Cosmopolitan, Glamour and In Style. The Washington, D.C.-based writer was a wreck – sleeping around, alienating friends and generally taking her life in a downward spiral. But after a year spent following the advice in women's magazines, Ms. Alter says she managed to get her life back on track, and even found true love.

She talked to The Globe and Mail about her new book, Up For Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over.

I can't believe you looked at Cosmo and said: “This magazine will save me.”

Why wouldn't you want to be bossed around by [former editor] Helen Gurley Brown? She's awesome. There's also something great about giving over control, just letting magazines take over. It's sort of liberating. Women's magazines definitely have a bad rap, but … I looked at them as being full of hope, like they were showing me what this perfect life could look like. I sat down and wrote this list of what I wanted, the changes I wanted to make, and they really did resemble these cover lines you see on the front of women's magazines.

Was there any advice that you rejected right away?

A lot of the sex stuff I rejected. I think I would be better off trying those reverse cowgirl moves on a total stranger. And I realized that my partner was satisfied and that I didn't have to master the astro cowgirl.Did Cosmo teach you anything other than bizarre rodeo-inspired sex moves?

There was one exercise on how to look more assertive in the office. They said that you should take a pencil and when you go to make your point with someone, if you want them to do something, you just subtly shake your pencil at them a little bit. I tried it on my co-worker who never did anything and it worked. I was like, wow, Cosmo!

This month's Cosmo has a piece called “Why men cheat in August.” Didn't reading this stuff make you neurotic?

I did have moments where I would get worried that he was going to leave me for a newer model, like Brad Pitt did with Jennifer Aniston. But those thoughts were already there. The women's magazines didn't create that fear in me. The ones that were aimed at making me feel neurotic, all the ones about “Is he going to cheat?” were actually helpful, because I would talk to my partner about them. I would say “Are you having head sex?” and we'd talk about it.Isn't it a bit psycho to say to someone you're involved with: “Marie Claire says you're a toxic bachelor?”

It made it easier to get into the conversation. It's almost like saying, “I have this friend who …”

It actually freed me up to have these conversations that I never would have had, especially in the early stages of a relationship. Even with my mom, I had a list of questions from Real Simple that were sort of this conduit to having this very authentic conversation. It gave me an excuse to question her in this way because it wasn't me asking, it was Real Simple.You met and married your husband Karl while you were doing this experiment. Do you think the magazines helped you find love?

I think I wouldn't have been open to somebody like Karl had I not started this improvement process. I just didn't know what was good for me any more. But I think once I really started working on myself and thinking about what I wanted, bad things just started to fall away. Karl was like the icing for me. But I didn't use magazines to find a man or get a proposal. That was never the endgame. I started this because my life was unravelling.

Couldn't you have just made a decision to pull it together?

It was the decision to do something, to get myself out of the rut I was in. I had had enough and was supremely unhappy. You get advice from everybody anyway, why not women's magazines? It would have been great to live in Italy and Indonesia and India for a year, like Eat Pray Love, but I spent $144 on my subscriptions. It was an affordable, doable and really relatable idea. Magazines have millions of subscribers and I think there's a real common thread for the women reading them, which is the sense of possibility.

What was the worst piece of advice you took from a magazine?

I think it was Glamour that had tips on how to keep your relationship going and the last one was that it was okay to have a few secrets from your partner. And I used that as an excuse not to reveal a pretty important piece of information [that she had once slept with the mutual friend they had asked to officiate their wedding]. That was really not a good idea. I finally came clean because I thought, “I can't enter a trusting relationship like this.”

Could men do this with magazines?

I think their magazines are much more inclusive. It's like, “Come on, we're guys, we're silly, let's help each other out.” … Women's magazines have the veiled warning of, “If you don't do it, some girl's going to come in and do it,” especially with relationships. There's always somebody younger, prettier, more willing to try the reverse cowgirl. So there's this element of fear that women respond to, whether it's fear of aging or competition. Men's magazines are much more team-oriented: “As long as one of us is getting laid, hurray!”