Boosting metabolism

I’ve been dieting for about 8 weeks now and while I’ve gotten great results I believe that I’ve dropped calories too low and could have seen similar results while eating more. Right now I’m around 200 lbs, 12% bodyfat and I’m eating 2000 calories. This certainly isn’t starving my body going by the 10-12x bodyweight equation, however I think I should be eating more. I have been doing a once a week refeed where I shoot over maintenance and I believe this has helped greatly in keeping my metabolism going. However I’d like to up my calories a bit to prevent excess muscle loss during the final stages of the diet. My main question is should I just add the calories starting next week and go from there, or should I take a week off at maintenance to reset metabolism and then drop calories? I plan on boosting my calories to 2400 and adding a little more cardio so I’m wondering if the instant flux of 400 calories a day is enough to get my metabolism running again. If not it might be better to hit maintenance for a short time to boost it then go back down to 400.

I’d definitely take a few days at above caloric needs, in the 16x area, to get you out of the “starvation” mode. You don’t note your workout plan, but I’m assuming three or four weight workouts weekly? If so, yup, you don’t have enough calories. Are your protein grams high, in the 300 range? You don’t break it down for us, so it’s difficult to help. The best thing is, you pretty much know the problem and how to correct it, so go for it.