Q:

Deploying From Sandbox (Enterprise) - loss of permissions, field security, etc

I have been reading up on this particular area of concern and from what I'm reading, it sounds like the solution I've been creating for the past two weeks is going to be a nuisance to deploy from Sandbox to Production.   Mainly:
A custom object with about 60 custom fields, each with specific permissions for specific profiles. 
Everything I'm reading tells me that I will have to manually configure every permission on every profile, and every field's security, after I deploy to Production (many fields are meant only to be edited by certain Profiles, etc). 
Is there another way?  I don't use Force.com IDE.   I simply use Sandbox and Production SF. 

A:

When you add profiles to assign permissions in a change set, it only impacts the components of the change set.  Change sets are never destructive, so they can't remove permissions you've assigned in production.  You are safe to include the profiles during the change set deploy. 

A:

Daniel is right, just be aware some Profile settings are always transferred when you include the profile in the change set (e.g. Profile's system permissions). 
To avoid overwriting the production profile settings from sandbox, simple solution is to first send change set with anything (e.g. Account custom field) which is the same on prod and sandbox + all profiles from prod to sandbox - this will apply the production permissions to sandbox - and then you can send your change set from sandbox to prod. 
As sandbox has already been updated to prod status, you won't overwrite anything and only add new stuff to the profiles on prod.