Started new job and can’t work out how or if I should add cardio.

MikePTY wrote: »

Based on your description, you are likely in the "very active" activity level. I would change it to that and go from there.

^^This. MFP is designed with the expectation that calories burned from regular daily life activities, like your job, should be accounted for through the activity level, not through logging exercise.

I don't know what your goals are, but if after a few weeks you find you're losing faster than you want, or not gaining as fast as you want, or losing when you want to maintain, increase your calorie goal manually.

Or, if it turns out that you're losing slower than you want, or gaining more quickly than you want, or gaining when you want to maintain, you could adjust the activity goal to "active" instead of "very active," and see how that works. But I agree with @MikePTY that this sounds like "very active" as MFP defines it.

Nanoosh92 wrote: »

In my opinion, its better to choose highly active and dont exercise at all, as the most important type of exercise while on a diet is strength training. It helps to build muscles that burn more calories at rest and increase your metabolism by increasing your metabolic rate on contrar to cardio that only burns calories during the workout. In your case, your job description already includes lifting weights which, in my opinion, is equivalent to strength training workouts.

That statement is about 20% accurate.

- Strength training can be useful while losing weight to help to mitigate loss of muscle mass from the calorie deficit. Cardio training can be useful in burning additional calories and improving overall fitness and heart health. I wouldn't say one is most important. Both are beneficial in different ways.
- EPOC occurs after lifting and cardio. Granted the EPOC after lifting is slightly higher than most cardio. That said EPOC is usually vastly overestimated. So you're talking about a slight difference is a very small effect which renders the difference moot.
- The 'muscle burns more calories' thing is also vastly overestimated. IIRC each additional lb of muscle burns like 6cal extra per hour so again in the grand scheme of things not a huge amount. This also doesn't take into account that actually putting on 1lb of muscle while maintaining a calorie deficit is quite a feat to begin with.

OP, the way MFP is designed to work is for your 'normal daily life' to be included in your activity level setting. In your case that definitely sounds like active or very active. Exercise calories are designed to be added for dedicated 'workouts' outside of usual daily life.

That said, there are 2 points to be made here.
1. That's how MFP was designed to work, but that doesn't mean you have to use it that way. MFP is a tool and like any tool it's up to you how you use it. The end result is that you're able to maintain a calorie deficit so use MFP anyway you can to achieve this goal. There's no right and wrong, just effective and ineffective.

2. Your settings aren't permanent. You can change them any time. Set your activity level at active and eat to your calorie target for a few weeks. Check your results and adjust accordingly depending on if you're weight changing at the expected rate and how you're feeling. This thing is a lot of trial and adjustment particularly at the beginning when you're just getting started and don't have a lot of data to work with.

G'luck