 Resting metabolic rate is the largest component of our daily energy budget. The direct effects of physical activity are relatively small compared to how many calories we expend just living and breathing. Now, during special ops training or climbing a 4-mile high mountain, you may burn 4,000 calories a day, but for most people, calories we burn just lying around existing exceeds normal physical activities. Thus, our metabolic rate can have implications for controlling our weight. Remember how dietary nitrate found in beets and green leafy vegetables improve the efficiency of the little power plants within our cells, boosting athletic performance by extracting more energy from every breath? Well, if we eat a lot of vegetables, might it slow our metabolism since our body can function so much more efficiently with the calories we give it? They gave people a dose of nitrate equivalent to a few servings of spinach or beets, and indeed, their resting metabolic rate slowed on average about 4%. That's nearly 100 calories a day. If our bodies burned that many fewer calories a day and we didn't eat any less, we could put on a few pounds. Of course, green leafy vegetables are like the healthiest things on the planet, so we shouldn't decrease our greens intake to try to control our weight. But I think maybe it was a way our body evolved to use vegetables to help preserve energy during lean times in our ancient past. But this isn't just some kind of quirky interest. Slowing our metabolism may have benefits for our longevity. You know what else? Similarly slows your metabolism? Chloric restriction, like eating every other day. That may be one reason caloric restriction is associated with a longer lifespan in many animals. Maybe like a candle burning with a smaller flame allows us to last longer. It's hard to walk around starving all the time, but it's easy to replicate that same metabolic benefit by eating a big daily salad. This may be why one of the six most powerful things we can do to live longer may be eating green leafy vegetables. So not smoking, not heavily drinking, walking at least an hour a day, getting a good seven hours of sleep, and greens at least almost every day, in addition to achieving an ideal weight. Doing even just one of those may cut our risk of premature death by around 20 to 25%.