Balance between the losing phase and living your life.

Those are some pretty strict numbers. If you want to keep to those numbers even with eating out, you need to be really disaplined with the snacks so you can have some wiggle room for dinner.

When I was at 3-4 months out, I was doing about 80-90 g of protein and 40 g of carbs. With 40 g of carbs, you can eat out IME.

Definitely, it all gets easier in maintenance because you aren't going to be eating 600 calories for the rest of your life. Even if your maintenance calories only end up being 1200 a day, you probably aren't going to up your protein much more than it is now so that means you get almost 600 calories of carbs and fat! Think about if you were eating 75-100 g of carbs a day and 50-60 g of fat. That's 5x as many carbs and up to 3x as much fat. If your maintenance calories end up being higher than that, it gets even easier.

As an example, today I had cashew chicken from a local Chinese restaurant for lunch and most of a Western Bacon Cheeseburger for dinner. That was 1559 calories (slightly less than I burned), 124 g of protein, 143 g of carbs (because of the bun-that's high for me), and 60 g of fat. I still do the protein shake for breakfast and my snacks are mostly protein and veggies so that gives me wiggle room for lunch and dinner. Normally one of lunch and dinner is lean meat and veggies, but not today! 

ETA One point of the WL phase is to learn. I spent a lot of time trying things and seeing what worked and what didn't work. Most of what I tried worked but not everything. If it didn't work, I tried something else. You can't learn if you don't try things and it's important to learn -- what works, what doesn't. What you like, what you don't. What's worth the calories, what isn't. How to fit in the stuff you like; how to avoid the stuff that triggers you. You can't do that if you are afraid to make a mistake.

Sarah, I agree with you that eating out is a challenge. For me, it's such a big challenge that I'd rather not do it until I'm in maintenance and have a bit more wiggle room.

I stay on plan so much better when I can eat at home or bring food from home to work. Even if I check menus in advance, it's very hard to guess at all the ingredients and enter the proper amounts into MFP if the food is cooked by someone else.

I'm not looking forward to some business trips I have coming up. Normally, I love trips, but I hate the challenge of not knowing in advance what my food will be and not being able to enter it in advance on MFP. Plus, it's a brand-new job that I started last week, so my boss and coworkers don't know me that well yet; I don't want to come off as too fussy (I already have to mention I'm a vegetarian when meals come up).

So, maybe for us the answer is just to bring our own food as much as possible until we are in maintenance. That's what I'm going to try to do. I will see if I can get a fridge and/or a microwave in my hotel room and bring my bariatric foods.

Grr!

Personally,

I think you are emphasizing low carb and low fat too much, and this is causing situations that is making you feel deprived.  The deprivation could very well lead to falling off the wagon and not making goal, as that is a tough regiment to maintain long term.  Perhaps you could be a little less rigid when you go out, and maintain that plan when at home?  Nothing crazy, but an extra 20-30 grams of carb (complex) and a little more fat will not be the end of the world, and you will not be doomed to fail.