In the era of the internet a good headline for your article is important to draw attention and get readers. There is a lot of competition out there and people’s time is limited, so they usually skim the header, first paragraph and picture.

What I’ve seen on the website of the Guardian (which I usually praise a lot) almost made me cry. Well, in fact I have even sent a short rant email to a friend of mine. It almost felt like abusing the system, cheating and dangerously close to leaving people misinformed if they don’t read the whole article. This is the catchy headline of the article:

Why exercise won’t make you thin

Even worse, the first paragraph continues with “Got a few pounds to lose? Cancel the gym membership”

What will anyone who just reads this take away? That exercise is pointless and you can as well just sit on your couch doing nothing. This is dangerously wrong. Deep into the article the true meaning becomes clear. One would have to exercise a lot to equal out the donut they’ve just eaten. The better way would be to not eat the donut at all. Eating less is a much more efficient way to lose weight than going to the gym for an hour. So my point is, this is not an Either-Or situation. You can eat less AND go to the gym. Surely if two people with similar weight eat exactly the same but one is doing exercise, the latter would lose more weight. Ok, or gain some weight because of muscle mass. If you take exercise as an excuse to eat even more afterwards, it won’t do anything, of course.

But surely a headline like “Why eating less will make you thin” is less spectacular than “Why exercise won’t make you thin”

*Rant off*

(And yes, my headline sucks – intentionally)