Your plant is relying on every leaf she has, to produce the energy she needs to grow her biggest and best flowers. Removing healthy green leaves reduces her capacity to produce energy, slowing growth and with the possibility of smaller flowers.
Less/fewer healthy green leaves = less energy produced = less growth = slower/smaller flowering potential.
The inner branches are relying on those very same leaves that you are contemplating to remove, to produce the energy they need to grow. A plant can never have too many leaves. The whole plant is dependent on the leaves for every function that a plant has. Some well considered "lollipopping" should be undertaken to remove weak/small/spindly growths, but removing big healthy green fan leaves is only going to deprive your plant. Light can and will penetrate upper leaves, even if humans can not see it, and strike lower leaves, giving your plant the opportunity to make energy. Try only removing yellow leaves and leave all big green healthy leaves to make the energy your plant requires for making her biggest and best flowers. As you can tell, I personally am extremely anti defoliation, however everyone has their own reasons/beliefs/advice about doing these sorts of things, but defoliation during flowering is probably one of the absolute worst times to do it, apart from doing it to young plants. Each time defoliation occurs, two things happen; a drop in metabolism due to the diminished energy supply which triggers a response to grow new leaves and due to the lowered metabolism, slowed and smaller growth due to the diminished energy supply. So, if removing healthy green leaves triggers your plant to grow new healthy green leaves, why remove them in the first place? If it also slows growth and with potentially smaller flowers, what's the point?
Hope this helps,..... Organoman.