Why You Can Keep All Your Muscle but Still Lose Strength on a Cut — with Khash Farzam

🏋️‍♀️ Extended version of this interview: https://www.patreon.com/evidencestrong/posts/keeping-muscle-166807530 🏋️‍♀️

Manipulating body weight in sports like weightlifting and powerlifting may influence performance. This is because when losing weight, athletes usually lose some muscle mass, not only fat. But what would happen if all the weight loss came from the fat tissue? Khash Farzam discusses his patient, a powerlifter, who lost only fat, kept all his muscle, but still lost some strength.

Dr. Khashayar Farzam is an emergency physician in Kitchener-Waterloo with a broad clinical background in acute care, metabolic health, obesity medicine, and men’s health. He is the founder of True North Metabolic, a physician-led clinic focused on weight management and men’s health with a focus on hormonal health, cardiometabolic risk and hair loss. Outside of medicine, Dr. Farzam is an elite powerlifter who has represented Team Canada and has set multiple Guinness World Records in strength-based categories. His work combines emergency medicine experience with a strong interest in preventive health, performance, and evidence-based metabolic care. Through both his clinical practice and athletic background, he aims to make complex health, hormone, and body composition topics more practical and understandable for patients.

Enjoy!

Original research paper:

Farzam K. Maintenance of Skeletal Muscle Mass Does Not Guarantee Bench Press Performance: A Body-Composition Case Study. Cureus. 2026 May 9;18(5).

https://assets.cureus.com/uploads/case_report/pdf/492045/20260509-442747-cuh4vr.pdf

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