Can we increase our metabolism?

Can we ever get our metabolism back to that of someone who did not have WLS?  I worry about the long term effects of eating under 1000 calories for so long.  I know that strength training will help.  I read an article on the Internet(and we all know how reliable that is....lol...)  that suggested adding 100 calories per month.  It said you would gain weight at first and then it would stabilize as your body reset.  You would continue to do this until you reached about 1600 calories per day.  This was aimed at people who had not had WLS, but had been eating 800 calorie diets for a long period of time.

 yes you can increase your Metabolism.  I dunno about slowly adding calories back in to your diet increasing your metabolism.  Your RMR and metabolic rates are determined by a number of factors 1 of which is lean muscle mass.  Muscle burns more calories than fat so having more muscle means more calories burned.  Now the difference in say 150 vs 160 pounds of lean muscle is not going to be another 500-600 calories a day.  

Lead a healthy and fit active lifestyle and your body will eventually follw suit.

Thanks, I am doing the daily exercise.  I should probably add a couple more days of strength training to what I normally do. 

It is my hope that by adding some exercise to my life I will tone up my muscles, which means add muscle mass to my body, and hopefully replace fat mass with the muscle mass.

The result being that more muscle equals more calories burned in a given day no matter if I'm giving my award-winning impression of a tree sloth, or if I'm acting like an insane geometry teaching dynamo in my classroom.

Since I've decided NOT to change my calories, but I must get rid of some more fat, the only other option is to burn some calories off with exercise. But in the BIGGER picture, I want more mucle mass so that I'll feel healthier, and naturally burn off some of the fat I've regained even if I don't weigh different.

So I'm attempting to mess with my metabolism by exercising. Not sure if it's sound reasoning, but I think it is!

I increased mine!  After 3 months of bootcamp exercise classes 2x per week supplemented with walking/running and Zumba, my RMR (resting metabolic rate) and TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) increased.  Also, my "bad" cholesterol decreased and my "good" cholesterol increased.  I don't know about adding calories in, but I added in more healthy carbs during this time as well.

Since that time I've been less active due to emergency surgery and other health problems, so I'm worried I lost the improvements I made.  I will find out in a couple of weeks when I get a new RMR and blood work done.

My thoughts on the subject:  Yes and no.

Yes, you can make your body a more efficient machine by increasing muscle mass and fueling the body on a regular schedule.  This can result in optimum metabolism....but is your optimum equal to a "regular" non WLS person?  Probably not.

I believe (and have proven personally) that if your metabolism is broken, it is broken.  Sluggish metabolism was one of the main reasons for my sustained obesity.  Now, 3 years out, I eat between 1,600-2,000 calories per day to maintain my weight.  Seems like a lot?  But in reality, somone my age/weight/activity level/muscle mass should need about 2,400 daily....so, yes, I'm still "broken", but completely satisfied with the amount  of food I can eat in maintenance.  That would not be the case if I didn't have restriction.

That is what I was afraid of.  Thanks for your input.

Ditto.  Exercise will definitely help improve metabolism, but cannot overcome true physiological metabolic issues.  I also think that many people overestimate the number of additional calories that women burn with just a moderate amount of additional muscle mass.  Unless women seriously bulk up, the additional muscle doesn't contribute very much to the overall calories burned during the day (the RMR), but apparently will increase the amount of calories burned when working out.

Lora

 Yes.  Workout, convert fat to muscle and make yourself a lean mean calorie burning machine.