"...250 bench presses..." 275 lb bench presses! Cheez...Liv must be a math major...doesn't even use units...Hey liv, were you sleeping thought dimensional analysis?...
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Seriously, do not be afraid of eating correct foods and keep your caloric deficit under your BMR plus actives. Do not ever go under your BMR. If not, you will seriously mess up your metabolism, end up eating much less, feeling hungry all the time and not losing body fat.
You can use Fit Day to estimate your BMR + activities both weekly and during the weekend. I make my estimates by factoring in all activities except whatever I'm doing for exercise. I subtract my caloric expenditure via exercise to the estimated BMR + activities figure. You'll be very pleasantly supply how fast it will total to 3000 (+/- 250) calories in no time.
And, above all, don't stress out over the scale. Fat loss is something you will be tackling for the rest of your life. When you reach your goal, the task will not be over. You will have to be under guard to ensure you never gain it back. It took quite a while to gain the fat weight, and it will not come off over night. Your body weight will fluctuate all over the place on a daily basis. I believe it's best to weigh yourself once weekly, at most, to gauge how your fat loss is progressing. Hey, if you gain a couple of pounds one week, instead of jumping off of the nearest, tallest building, read over your food diary and analyze it. Analyze your activity level, maybe your sodium intake, etc. What foods you might try to eliminate or add to your diet. Learn how to tweak your diet to produce the maximum results in a healthy way. Experiment within the Atkins dietary plan.
The good news is that Atkins, for all the research I've been doing on it, in general low carbs diets, are the way to go. It produces the best fat loss and spares your protein catabolism. After all, the important part of exercise is to maintain, if not build, lean muscle mass to hype up your metabolism and avoid looking like a deflated balloon when reaching your ideal weight goal. You need energy and the right nutrients to repair all the micro tears you produced in your body after working out.
But the first two weeks on induction, as severe it can be, are essential. From there you can consider going up the rungs depending how your body responded to the severe carbohydrate depletion it has endured.
Experiment and use your instinctive voice (or intelligent design...I don't want to step on philosophical toes...). You'll quickly learn was is right and wrong with what you are doing. Read as much as you can in this forum. Do not read my posts, I'm a heretic...
I won't write "good luck" here in my closing. Luck has nothing to do with reaching your goals. You will become what you truly believe. I think some One very important in my life said that with this tool, I'll be able to move mountains. Well, at least, I can move a 275 lb bar bell with a little more effort that a couple cans of peaches...
Get crackin'! And try your hand at an exercise challenge in this forum. They're the best thing since sliced bread or cans of peaches.
Norman