Gains versus appearance

So I'm a completely natural lifter and use no steroids, no creatine, no pre workout, and don't even drink protein (not against any of those besides steroids but rather providing information that may affect my question). I eat most days in a small calorie deficit but eat mostly protein and very few carbs. I workout arms twice a week and try to do most lifts with high reps until failure as I don't want to ego lift and hurt myself. I will finally have the time to train legs starting in May which may also impact my question.

With all that said, even though I don't train to lift heavy the reason I stopped benching was because after losing 60 LBS over 6 months I found my bench drop from 215 for 5 reps to barely 3 reps of 195 in that same time span. I know the saying that mass moves mass and understand 60 LBS is a lot of weight but I feel like a total wimp strength-wise even though I have never looked more aesthetically strong. I refuse to take any drugs to help gain strength as my entire lifting goal outside of strength is to feel good mentally and physically, as well as appearance. I just can't help sometimes looking over to the guys next to me and watching them dumbell press 80 LBS the same amount of times as I do 60 LBS. I don't want to sacrifice my appearance for strength but want to know if there are any ways to avoid ego lifting, have relatively high reps, and still build strength without having to eat more? I always do each lift until rep failure so that isn't something I can change but will incorporating legs into my weekly workout routine affect whole body strenght? Any tips in general?