It is an understatement to say that she has come a long way. If today she is a fitness model for her 1.5 million subscribers, five years ago her doctor simply told her she was at breaking point. It was 2017, Joan MacDonald was 71 and a mountain of health issues: chronic high blood pressure, kidney failure, cholesterol, obesity and general exhaustion. All managed with various drugs and pills, a cocktail she had been taking for decades. “All my life I had taken care of my children, my husband, my job, she told ABC, I forgot myself, and for nothing in the world would I want to return to this previous state.“
How do you completely change your lifestyle overnight? She explains that, in her case, it was a personal trigger, when her doctor doubled her dose of medication: “The, she saysi really hit rock bottom, i was tired of being tired and constantly depressed, and it was my daughter who reached out to me“His daughter, that’s good, is a fitness teacher, she was the one who told him”it’s now or never“. So Joan MacDonald took the plunge.
She started by eating three meals a day, instead of snacking every hour. She did her first stretches, first exercises, first abs, first push-ups. She lost 25 kilos, gained muscle, but above all she felt good: over the months her cholesterol dropped, her hypertension disappeared, as did her kidney problems and her chronic exhaustion. So she stopped the drugs, and the photos of her transformation are impressive.
At 75, Joan MacDonald has never been so fit in her entire life, and she has decided to pass on her knowledge and her advice to other seniors with videos overflowing with smiles on Instagram. Her followers can see her lifting 100-pound dumbbells, demonstrating stretches for beginners, and dancing to the Bee Gee’s. A renaissance that impresses well beyond Canada since we find her interviewed in the Indian, Brazilian, or even Italian press, newspapers to which she always says the same thing: “There is nothing magical, it’s just work, but rewarding work that makes you feel alive, and frankly that’s all that matters.”