Zubevi “STRONG” Khalfani to appear as a trainer on Dr. Phil’s Ultimate Weight Loss Race

September 9, 2008

by Allan Donnelly

FLEXONLINE.COM

If you’ve been to an NPC bodybuilding contest in Southern California, you know Zubevi “STRONG” Khalfani as NPC promoter extroadonnaire John Lindsay’s right-hand man. Tomorrow at 4 pm, you’ll know him as something else: one of the trainers on the Dr. Phil Show’s Ultimate Weight Loss Race.

The Ultimate Weight Loss Race will feature 12 participants from across the United States and follow them through a season-long challenge. Strong, a former NPC bodybuilder who won the light-heavyweight division at the Orange County Classic in 2002, was chosen out of approximately 40,000 applicants. He will be featured as one of the show’s six trainers, along with former Biggest Loser trainer Kim Lyons and IFBB fitness professional Nicole Rollolazo.

“It was a very long process,” the 45-year-old Strong says. “I went in for the audition the next day and they didn’t give me a call back for two weeks. I almost forgot about it. The whole process took about four months. We started filming on August 15.”

A former member of the US Military Police and a Chemical Operations specialist in the US Army, Strong worked for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s department for five years before getting his private investigator’s license and serving as a bodyguard to celebrities like Will Smith, Bruce Willis and Morgan Freeman.

Along with serving as Lindsay’s right-hand man, Strong had been working as a personal trainer at Powerhouse Burbank when he received the call from the Dr. Phil Show.

“The experience with the Dr. Phil show is awesome,” Strong says. “It has enabled me to look at this third component of getting people into shape, the psyche. We know the nutrition, we know the resistance training, but why do these people let themselves get so obese? You know why, most are depressed and torn apart by something that happened in their lives. Here, we get to get them thinking right and hopefully healed from whatever got them in that state. I’m proud to be a part of it.”

Team STRONG from the Ultimate Weight Loss Race (from L to R):
Richard Jackson, Zubevi “STRONG” Khalfani and Jeff Jackson