On one hand, you're probably overestimating your BMR
on the other, it's true metabolism slows down during prolonged dieting to compensate. It's purely homeostatic, no real "damage" tbh. It makes intuitive sense too.. if you stayed in a perennially impoverished/emaciated state, your body would have to downregulate metabolic hormones and attenuate your metabolic rate to save your life lol.
With that said, if you slowly raised your kcals, there's not too much issue with raising it back to normal levels within a reasonable amount of time. Inb4LayneNorton knowledge that it'd take upward of a year to fix a "damaged" metabolism. Lol.

Yeah I figured it was just from eating at a deficit for so long since I started working. Body just makes due with the amount of calories I've consumed over that time.

Just can't consistently eat more than what I do right now due to times I have available for meals, and my satiety levels.

gotta shock ur body

eat 5000 kcal every other day

and 2000 kcal the others....


jk

I felt my stomach get so full just reading that lol.