Part two of the Arsheen transformation opens with the question everyone asks Tony Huge and few ask honestly: will he develop irreversible health conditions from experimenting with these compounds? His answer is yes, it is possible, and he accepted that when he started. Then he explains why his own health has surprised him. The rest of the episode is a short, specific look at the chemistry Arsheen is running in a calorie deficit, why one of those compounds is draining his energy instead of raising it, and why Tony has him training back and legs instead of the muscles most men want.
Video: Arsheen’s Transformation Part 2: From Flabby to Jacked Using the Enhanced Pathways. Published April 30, 2026. Watch on YouTube.
What the video covers
- 00:00 The risk question: Will experimentation cause irreversible harm? Tony’s short answer.
- 00:10 Part two intro: Nothing taboo, nothing off limits, but it has to be healthier than natural.
- 00:32 Arsheen on MK-677: Told to take it, avoiding it because the hunger fights his deficit.
- 00:55 Tony’s fix for hunger: Pairing MK-677 with retatrutide.
- 01:33 Cardarine and T3: What Arsheen is running and how each feels.
- 01:57 Why T3 drains him: A normal thyroid was never his limiting factor.
- 02:15 Cardarine as the offset: Fat for fuel all day, endurance up, tiredness partly cancelled.
- 02:56 The health answer in full: Tony’s data after years of experiments, and who actually dies in bodybuilding.
- 04:18 Back and legs over chest and biceps: Big muscles burn more and demand more recovery.
- 04:45 Training on limited time: Compound lifts, maximum fiber activation, blood flow into the large groups.
- 06:01 Next episode: Leaner, stronger, side effects reduced.
The hunger problem and the pairing
Arsheen’s complaint is one Tony has heard for years. MK-677 works, but it makes him so hungry he cannot control his appetite, and right now he is in a calorie deficit that matters more than anything else. So he is avoiding it. Tony’s response is that MK-677 is one of the compounds behind some of the most successful transformations he has done, because it is easy to use and effective, and he understands the hunger. His answer is a pairing he has been experimenting with: retatrutide alongside MK-677. In his experience it mitigates a lot of the hunger, so Arsheen gets the growth hormone benefits, the fat loss and the muscle, with less of the appetite. He reads Arsheen’s reluctance as fear from past experience rather than a reason to drop the compound.
Why T3 makes him tired
Arsheen is also running cardarine and T3, and he reports that the T3 sometimes leaves him exhausted even though it helps his fat loss. Tony’s explanation is a good example of how he thinks. T3 is thyroid hormone. For people with low thyroid it raises body temperature, activity and energy because it corrects a deficiency. Arsheen’s thyroid is normal. It was never his limiting factor. Add T3 anyway and you do get more metabolism and more fat burning across the day, but you do not get the energy lift, because there was no deficit to fill. Instead, energy goes down, and Tony suspects Arsheen is particularly sensitive to elevated thyroid.
Cardarine is doing the offsetting. It shifts the body toward using fat for energy through the day, which helps endurance and helps energy, and in Tony’s read that is partly cancelling the T3 tiredness. The two compounds hit different pathways, one raising metabolic rate and the other changing fuel selection, which is why one can drain and the other can restore in the same body at the same time.
“It’s possible. It’s a risk I’m willing to take for the advancement of science. That’s a sacrifice that I signed up for when I started conducting medical research on myself.”
Tony Huge, 02:56
The health question, answered straight
The episode opens and returns to the question of permanent harm, and Tony does not dodge it. Yes, irreversible conditions are possible. He accepted that risk when he began conducting research on himself. What he then reports is that despite the experiments he has run, his health is outstanding and he has been shocked at how low the side effects have been. His supporting argument is about who actually dies in bodybuilding and from what. In his reading, the deaths cluster around stimulants and diuretics, the things everybody takes, rather than the compounds people assume. That is his reason for taking the risk seriously without treating every compound as equally dangerous.
Why the workout is back and legs
Chest, shoulders and biceps are the muscles most men want, and Tony points out they are also the ones that burn the fewest calories and need the least recovery. For a full-body transformation he wants the large groups working: back, which is far bigger than chest, legs, and compound lifts. Arsheen does not have much time in the gym, and the transformation is, in Tony’s words, very chemistry-based. So the training has to make the most of limited sessions: activate as many fibers as possible, push blood into the biggest muscle groups, keep moving to stimulate mitochondria and whole-body metabolism, and recover enough to let the chemistry do its work. The chemistry does most of the building. The training decides where the signal goes.
Cheat Sheet Pivot
What Arsheen reported and what Tony described about the protocol, not instructions.
- Arsheen is in a calorie deficit and has paused MK-677 because of hunger; Tony’s proposed fix is pairing it with retatrutide, which in his experience blunts the appetite.
- Arsheen reports fat loss but fatigue on T3; Tony attributes the fatigue to adding thyroid hormone to a normal thyroid, where it was never the bottleneck.
- Cardarine is in the stack for fat mobilization and endurance, and Tony credits it with offsetting some of the T3 tiredness.
- Tony’s own health after years of self-experimentation is, by his report, outstanding, and he attributes bodybuilding deaths mostly to stimulants and diuretics.
- Training priority on limited time: back, legs and compound lifts over chest and biceps.
MK-677, retatrutide, cardarine and T3 are all in the Miracle Molecules Cheat Sheet. For the full pathway map this transformation follows, read From Fat to Jacked Using Every Muscle Building Pathway, and for what MK-677 does to labs over a full run, see MK-677 (Ibutamoren) Honest Review: 12 Weeks, Full Bloodwork.
Where the evidence stops
This is a six-minute progress episode with one subject and no citations. The retatrutide and MK-677 pairing is Tony’s own experiment, not a studied combination. The T3 explanation is a mechanism argument that fits Arsheen’s report, not a measurement. The claim about which drugs kill bodybuilders is Tony’s reading of the cases he knows, and the video does not source it. His own health is his report. The one thing the episode demonstrates rather than asserts is the reasoning: identify which pathway is actually limiting before adding to it, or the addition costs you something.
Keep going
For the heart rate data on the GLP-1 compound in this stack, read Retatrutide and Heart Rate: What the Research Shows, and for the muscle-preservation question with that drug class, see GLP-1 Muscle Loss: What Pharmacists Won’t Tell You. Companion articles reach the tonyhuge.is email list first, and the archive is on tonyhuge.is.