208 carbs?!

aarilynn

I can eat 208 carbs and lose weight? I'm 5'6 currently 145 pounds. I workout about 7 hours a week, cardio and strength training. The haybales spreadsheet gave me about 1800 calories per day, 208 carbs, 138 protein, and 51 grams of fat. Every other calculator has gave me about 160 carbs or less.

heybales

Sure, it's mainly about the calories, but it's best for muscle retention to meet certain minimum protein levels - so that's what the calc is giving.

Now, you can always eat more protein than that, but that's the almost 1 g per lb of LBM found in studies to help retain muscle mass, even with no lifting going on, and not a very small deficit.
So if it worked in that case, add in reasonable deficit, should be no problem retaining muscle mass.

So if you want to try to meet higher protein goals, you reduce carbs, not protein. Meet the calorie goal of course.
More protein may help your compliance to the eating level, may not matter. May be more expensive for you, may be hard to hit, ect.
So the calc is giving minimum to meet for good lifting activity on a diet.