Recently got on the band wagon again after taking a few months off. Now I'm back to ground 0 and wanted to try a different, shorter approach to my weight loss, muscle gain.

I wanted to try an initial keto diet for mass loss for the first 3 months or 20 lbs. Initially I only wanted to do cardio at 65-70 MHR and no weights as I've read doing heavy lifting during keto is a sure way to cause massive catabolism.

However after reading a bit more it seems that doing weight training might help me lose weight even quicker as it burns a significan amount of calories and increases body metabolism.

My questions to those who have done keto + weights before is how intensive were your weight training sessions, and what type of progam if any did you use?

I'm still not sure if I should do weights during keto but I figure someone here must have tried it before and would like to know the results.

Ohhh man, I definately tried it. I did a hardcore Atkins diet with less than 20g carbs a day for 2 weeks while lifting weights. For the first week I was 'okay' and i was able to lift approximately the same amount of weight as before. I definately noticed a decrease in my muscle recovery time so I was sore a lot longer. The second week my workouts went down the drain. I couldn't lift much anymore. I recommend doing the keto diet for a change, but I do not recommend you to do it if you want to lift weights. And trust me... lifting weights is way better than doing cardio for losing fat. It's good to put cardio into your routine though, but definately make sure your weightlifting aspect is sound.

I haven't done any keto diet, but I know for sure that when I drop my carbs below 300, exercise gets harder. Below 250 and I'm basically miserable. I could never imagine doing a keto diet.

Anyway, if you want my advice, I suggest a clean diet including carbs and a combination of weight training and cardio. If you say you want to lose 20 lbs in less than three months, it's more than reasonable. 10 lbs a month isn't hard, if you have a lot of fat to begin with. If you don't, I see no reason to why you should try any special diet in the first place.