Ryan Macdonald suffered a heart attack at the age of 38 as a result of a junk food diet and absolutely no exercise.
He was a bit above 280 lbs at the time of the heart attack, which was caused by a clogged artery that halted his heart for three minutes.
Even though he looked Death right in the face, he was miraculously saved from the potentially fatal situation.
However, this potentially fatal incident inspired Ryan, who is now 47, to change his ways and become a toned bodybuilder – an amazing metamorphosis that saw him shed a third of his body weight.
Ryan moved to Thailand, where he renovates and sells properties, leaving behind his six-figure job in London. “It was like ‘do I want to die?” he remembers, referring to his early demise near Crawley, West Sussex. “No.”
In August 2016, Ryan began experiencing chest issues, but he thought he could have a pulled muscle. He dialed 111, which is the non-emergency medical number.
However, Ryan was informed by call handlers that he would require an ambulance.
Then things started to go south.
Ryan stated: “The ambulance arrived after I sat at home for five minutes. “We’re going to take you to the hospital based on your symptoms,” they said when they arrived.
The emergency responders took his blood pressure and performed an ECG; which didn’t show anything way out of the ordinary. Then while heading to the hospital, his heart stopped beating in the back of the ambulance. Ryan got defibrillated two times after his heart has stopped.
He regained his consciousness by the time he got to the hospital and that was his turning point. “They told me that they lost me for 3 minutes”, he recalls. “I recall how isolated I felt at that precise moment. I was thinking, “Oh sh*t, I need to change my life massively,” as I sat in the back of the ambulance.
After putting two stents in him because of a blocked artery, and a few days spent at the hospital, Ryan got out. And just 3 days after he left the hospital, he decided to join a gym. He also changed his diet pretty much instantly.
“I truly had no idea what I was doing for the first few months; I would just go to the gym and do whatever. I maybe lasted for 20 minutes, I hadn’t done any exercise for maybe 15 years.”
Ryan got “excited to get out of bed” and began to love going to the gym more and more as his strength increased. At his lowest, he weighed less 80 kg/176 lbs, having lost a third of his body weight.
After his heart attack, Ryan remained in England for two more years before making the decision to pack up and go for the world.
“I worked mostly for banks in London, which was really lucrative, but I detested it,” he remarked.
“I was fortunate to be in a situation where I could simply leave. There must be more to life than spending the next twenty to thirty years doing something you hate. I quit my job and did some searching for what I wanted to do in life.”
Finally, he packed up and moved to Thailand where he sells properties and continues to train several times a week.
“Eight years ago, if someone had told me, ‘You won’t be married, you won’t be doing your old work, you’ll be living in Thailand developing houses,’ I would have simply laughed at them”.
“But I’ve never been happier and I think I’ve found my calling.”
