Short answer: As much as you enjoy, or as little as you can get away with.
Long answer: Whether you just started using Avatar or you’ve been tracking macros for a long time, it can be tough deciding how much cardio you should be doing. The answer depends on two things: (1) your recent history, and (2) your goal setting.
1. Cardio & Fat Loss
If you haven’t been doing cardio, it’s a good idea to hold off on starting until you’re well into a weight loss phase. In the beginning of a cut, the system will adjust your macros to put you in a calorie deficit. There’s no need to add cardio at this stage, because you’ll progress with nutrition alone. As your progress slows, the system will start dropping your macros, which may mean that you feel more hungry. When you’re well into a weight loss phase, it can be a good idea to add cardio to burn more calories so that the system won’t keep cutting down on your macros. Since you waited to use cardio as a calorie-burning tool, you’ll have plenty of room to slowly add in cardio sessions to keep driving progress.
If you’ve been doing a lot of cardio, and you want to start a weight loss phase, it can be tricky to make progress. In this case, you might not be able to increase cardio without going overboard and getting burnt out. That means that you’ll have three options:
(a) taper your cardio back a bit, in case you need it later;
(b) maintain your level of cardio so you don’t have to decrease your macros even more right at the start; or
(c) consider reverse dieting to bring up your calories without having to rely on the energy burn from cardio to keep you afloat.
2. Cardio & Reverse Dieting
If you haven’t been doing much cardio, you shouldn’t start doing more as you reverse diet. The point of a reverse is to gradually increase your calorie surplus so that your body can adapt to more food. If you’re erasing that extra, metabolism-boosting surplus with more cardio, you’re going to spin your wheels and go nowhere. Instead of adding cardio, try lifting weights. This will help you put that extra energy into building muscle, which will in turn help build your metabolism.
If you’ve been doing lots of cardio before the reverse, it’s a good idea to gradually decrease your cardio as you follow the reverse diet. This will help you make progress toward increasing your metabolism, as it becomes easier for the system to put you in a slight surplus. Don’t cut out cardio completely at the beginning, though. This could cause unwanted weight gain as your energy output drops too quickly. Maybe start by cutting out a half session of cardio every two weeks or so, or just reducing the number of minutes spent doing cardio each week by a little bit.
3. Cardio & Muscle Gain
If your goal is to gain muscle, you don’t have to do any cardio if you don’t want to. If you’ve been doing cardio and would rather not, this is a good time to taper it down. If you’d rather keep doing cardio because you prefer it, try to keep it to a minimum and keep the sessions short and intense (like sprints with short rest times in between) instead of long and slow (like a 45 minute jog). This will make sure your cardio sessions don’t interfere with muscle growth.
In any muscle gain setting, the primary focus should be on lifting weights. If cardio takes away energy that you could be spending in the gym, you might not be making as much progress as you could without it.
4. Cardio & Maintenance
If you’re in a maintenance phase, you can do whatever amount of cardio you prefer, from lots to none at all. The trick is staying consistent. During a maintenance phase, cardio doesn’t hurt or help the goal the same way it could for reverse dieting or weight loss. Instead, cardio becomes a part of your general energy balance. Because your goal is balance, keeping your energy expenditure (including cardio) the same each week will make it easier for the system to maintain your weight.
If you find it’s easier to maintain weight by eating more food, then cardio might help you eat slightly more macros, because you’re expending more energy. However, if you want to be able to maintain with more food, choosing a reverse diet setting is a better option than bolstering your macros with cardio alone.
For more information on cardio, check out these blog posts--Cardio and Muscle Gain: Everything You Need to Know and Answered: Cardio or Weights for Fat Loss