Dieters have long been looking for ways to speed up their metabolisms since at the end of the day, burning more calories means losing more weight. You can speed up your metabolism but you'll have to do more than sitting in the living room and watching TV.

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The amount of calories you burn in a day, also known as your total energy expenditure or TEE, is made up of three main categories. Thermic effect of food, resting energy expenditure and physical activity.

The thermic effect of food is the total energy your body uses to digest and absorb all the food you eat. The more you eat, the more energy your body uses to utilize all the food.

Resting energy expenditure is a broad category that includes everything your body does while you're not doing any activity. This includes energy your brain uses to think and your heart needs to pump. There isn't any practical or safe way to increase this number. Physical activity is the main area that you can use to speed up your metabolism.

If you're interesting in speeding up your metabolism, you're probably looking to lose weight which means you shouldn't eat more to increase your metabolism. There isn't too much you can do about your resting energy expenditure so your only option to speed up your metabolism is to increase your level of physical activity and exercise.

There are plenty of pills and drinks that promise to burn calories with no extra work on your part. Most of these drinks or pills are loaded with substances that are bad for your body including caffeine.

People have become sick and in rare cases even died after using these. Is serious injury worth burning a few extra calories? The only way to speed up your metabolism is through hard work mainly involving exercise.