I had a heart attack at 38 and was dead for 3 minutes – but it saved my life as I shed 8 stone and became a bodybuilder

ZERO exercise and a junk food diet led to Ryan Macdonald having a heart attack at the age of 38.

Weighing over 20 stone at the time (127 kg/280 lbs), the heart attack occurred due to a blocked artery, which stopped his heart for three minutes.

But the life-threatening event prompted Ryan, now 47, to turn his life around and become a ripped bodybuilder – an incredible transformation which saw him lose a third of his body weight.

Ryan gave up his six-figure London salary and now lives in Thailand, where he renovates villas and sells them.

Originally from Crawley, West Sussex, he said: “Coming that close to death so young, it was like ‘do I want to die? No’.

“It literally took almost dying to make me realise that. They didn’t need to tell me anything because I thought ‘if I carry on like this, I’m definitely going to die.

“I know if it hadn’t happened I’d be like everybody else, I’d have just sat in life, status quo, and just carried on.”

While living in London, Ryan started to experience chest pains in August 2016.

He called the 111 non-emergency medical number but suspected he could just have a pulled muscle.

However, call handlers advised Ryan he would need an ambulance.

Then, things took a turn for the worse.

Ryan said: “I sat at home for five minutes, the ambulance turned up. When they got there they said ‘we’re going to take you to hospital based on your symptoms’.

“They did an electrocardiogram and did my blood pressure, it was slightly elevated but nothing crazy.

“We got in the back of the ambulance and made it about two miles down the road, and I had a cardiac arrest in the back of the ambulance.

“My heart stopped for three minutes and I ended up getting defibrillated twice.

“I remember being conscious by the time we got to hospital and when they said they lost me for three minutes it was this massive turning point in my life.

“I remember feeling really alone at that moment in time, I was sat in the back of the ambulance thinking ‘oh shit, I need to change my life massively.'”

Ryan spent the next few days in hospital, and had to have two stents inserted after doctors found he had a blocked artery.

Over the course of the first couple of months I really didn’t know what I was doing, I’d just kind of go to the gym and do something

Ryan Macdonald

Just three days after being released from his doctors’ care, Ryan decided to hit the gym.

Ryan, who worked as an IT contractor for major banks in Canary Wharf, continued: “I completely changed my diet pretty much instantly.

“Over the course of the first couple of months I really didn’t know what I was doing, I’d just kind of go to the gym and do something.

“I maybe lasted for 20 minutes, I hadn’t done any exercise for maybe 15 years.”

As Ryan built his strength, he started to enjoy going to the gym more and more and became ‘excited to get out of bed’.

Now, he’s lost a third of his body weight, weighing under 12 stone (80 kg / 176 lbs) at his lowest.

Following his heart attack, Ryan stayed in England for another two years before deciding to pack it all in and travel the world.

He said: “I worked mainly for banks in London, which was incredibly well-paid but I absolutely hated it.

“I was lucky I was in a position to just be able to walk away. There’s got to be more to life than doing something you hate every day for the next 20 to 30 years.

“I quit my job and did some searching for what I wanted to do in life.”

Ryan then packed 13kg of clothing into a suitcase and jetted off to Indonesia to travel around Asia.

He then visited Vietnam and Thailand, where he decided to settle down. He’s now lived in Phuket for five years.

If somebody had said to me eight years ago ‘you won’t be doing your old job, you won’t be married, you’ll be living in Thailand developing properties’ I would have just laughed at them

Ryan Macdonald

Ryan added: “I had this six-figure job in London and thought ‘there’s no way forward in life, I can’t leave this job’ “I was kind of trapped, effectively, but I had enough money to resolve the problem and not worry about it.

“If somebody had said to me eight years ago ‘you won’t be doing your old job, you won’t be married, you’ll be living in Thailand developing properties’ I would have just laughed at them.

“It was just so far from possible, in my mind that was the least likely thing that would have ever happened.”