Depending on how carefully you want to track how you eat, I would recommend dropping the weight loss to ~1lb per week (~500 calories under TDEE). Any faster than that and you'll probably be sloughing off whatever muscle you already have, and you probably won't like the result of that.
With adequate exercise you won't lose muscle mass.
I work construction and went on a strict keto diet, I was losing ~1lb per weekday. I actually got stronger whilst on the diet, which I attribute to the increased testosterone that comes in after your body becomes adapted.
It's important to note that the Inuit used to live on an exclusive ketogenic diet, they also live in an environment that requires ~6,000 calories a day to simply maintain if living the traditional lifestyle.
What I found working outside whilst on keto and running into winter was that my body managed to maintain its heat extremely well and far better than previous years on a normal diet. I estimated my caloric use at between 4500-5000 a day by how much I ate and how much I lost.
As with any diet it's important to eat adequate protein and exercise. Protein is quite readily converted (very inefficiently) into sugar, and if you don't force it into ketosis you go into starvation and that's when you really risk muscle atrophy.
TL;DR High protein diets increase kidney filtration rates; whether it causes kidney disease is inconclusive. Non-animal protein is preferable to animal-based proteins.
I eat about the same protein as you and am the same height, but my start and target weights are slightly lower (st: 160, target:132). I track my calories/macros religiously (my wife calls it an obsession that I weight and track all the food I eat)
I would still not advise you to go over 2 lbs a week of weight loss (which if you do everything right, will be about 80% fat, 10% muscle and 10% water, give or take). Just because you eat more protein (or lift weights) doesn't mean your body won't trigger muscle breakdown. It will mitigate the amount, sure, but won't just magically stop it because of high protein intake. What most likely will happen, is your body will use protein for energy.
It is quite hard (only found one study that corroborates this (and it was with really untrained obese males) where there was actual muscle increase while losing fat (something along the lines of 2 kgs muscle increase and 9 kg of body fat lost over a period of 6 months I think), but interestingly enough it was a medium carb, medium protein, low fat diet. I'll try to dig up the publication when I can.
Also, do note that keto/low carb (and do note, that fitness keto is different from actual ketogenic diet, the latter being more than 85% of calories from fat) diets tend to produce quick weight loss at the beginning due to water weight and I still recommend to regularly have an high carb-eat at maintenance day to restore hormone levels and fill up the muscles with glycogen (and this will make you go up the scale 2-3 pounds). (ps: high carb day = loads of fruit, some rice, bread, not icecream+cookies+chocolate)
I too have personally had the best luck with 1.5 lbs - 2 lbs per week. The proper caloric deficit to achieve those weight loss amounts per week, along with a 25% carbohydrate, 47% protein, and 28% fat diet has allowed me to lose mostly fat with very little muscle.
With my body at least, it seems that the difference between 2 lbs per week and 3-4 lbs per week is huge in terms of how much muscle is kept during the fat loss process.
If you're already hugely overweight than of course it doesn't matter and fast weight loss should be expected.
Care to share any suggestions how to accomplish this with a diet that actually tastes good and doesn't require too much preparation time? Most people seem to use yucky protein shakes or huge portions of ham or other bland food and I just can't force myself to eat such stuff.
I use Premier Protein shakes, 30g/shake. I'll say this: when I eat like crap, this much protein is really tough. I was a bad-air machine, bathroom trips all day long, to put it nicely. Once I went to the slow carb diet and basically cut out carbs/sugar, it was very doable to have 3-4 shakes per day.
Thanks for the suggestion - these are prohibitively expensive over here (about $15 per single can from amazon.de), but I found similar products at much better prices that I'll give a try.
I used to work with a guy who was a body-builder type, and all he would eat was chicken breast, breakfast, lunch and dinner. I guess you have to pick what's important to you.
I think that if your goal is just to be generally healthy, there's no need to eat that much protein.
