It’s certainly possible. But you seem to be mostly appealing to what “everyone knows”. But in our society basically everyone has a dysregulated metabolism. My hypothesis is that is you don’t let your system get out of whack, it is possible to maintain lean mass and be lean.

Indeed this study found that resistance training can halt the accumulation of visceral fat. So unless somehow the resistance training led to no muscle, this seems to contradict what you’re arguing?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4018766/