I'm really sorry you lost your progress, but whether or not you have your autosaves on and whether they are set to load automatically or not, it's important to make a manual save every once in a while. Even the free users have access to one manual save slot along with their one autosave slot.

This way, even if you load the game (without autoloading your save) and have to step away for a minute, the autosave made on the title screen won't affect your manual save. Autosaves are like an emergency backup. If you don't have a manual save you don't really have a save.