Kimani Macharia weighed 150 kilos the day he walked away from his second well-paying job in less than a year.
He doesn’t look like that man anymore. He sports an impressive, lean and chiselled body that is hard to miss. Towering at 6 feet 2, he now weighs 85 kilos, thanks to a not-so-common fitness regime.
We met him at the VMX gym in Nairobi. He lands thunderbolt Muay Thai knee strikes into a hanging bag with the kind of force that could perhaps shatter a bone. It is hard to picture that he is the same man who was barely able to move under his own weight a few years ago.
Kimani Macharia delivers a Muay Thai knee strike during training.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
When he resigned for the second time, he had only recently returned to Kenya from the US.
“I thought the change of scenery would make things better,” he says between exercise rounds.
Back in the US, where he had worked for years, life had also looked good on paper.
“My job in Kenya was also very solid. It paid well, but not as much as what I earned in the US, $150,000 (Sh20 million) a year,” he chuckles.
Hated the routine
Money was never really the problem, nor was his weight, at least not in his mind.
“Money matters, no doubt, but life can’t only be about money. I know of people who have more money than they could ever spend, yet they are restless. Peace, happiness, and simply living in the moment are things we underrate too much. You can always find a way to make money, even when you are unhappy. But peace and satisfaction? Those are much harder to come by when your heart is not in the right place,” he tells BDLife.
“Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to live. To enjoy moments. To cherish them. We are constantly running after money like it’s the final destination. But has anyone ever truly said they have made enough?”
When he was 150 kilos, Kimani moved slowly as he carried around a body that had become too heavy for him. Yet being overweight, or ‘fat’ as he bluntly puts it, barely bothered him.
“I was just not happy. Yes, the money was good. But I hated the routine of waking up at the same time, sitting at the same desk for long hours, doing the same thing, day after day. I love IT [information technology], but I wasn’t born for that life. Gradually, I fell into depression. I drank a lot of beer. I ate whatever came my way. I didn’t care much.”
Eventually, when he could not take it anymore, he resigned and moved back home.
“When I returned to Kenya, I was hoping things would get better just by being back home. They never did. It was the same thing. This time, I even developed insomnia (lack of sleep).”
Then one evening after work, he sat his wife down.
“I told her I was resigning. To be honest, I never had a plan. I was just tired of being depressed every time I thought about going to work. I was always moody, never happy, always off. My wife had watched me struggle through all of it.”
That remains one of the hardest conversations he has ever had in nearly two decades of his marriage.
Kimani Macharia during a pike push-up session in training.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
“Imagine coming home on a random evening and, with no plan B, telling your wife you’re quitting a good job because you’re unhappy. Yet two children are depending on you, and bills are waiting every month. How would you react? I had never thought about it.
“When people say marriage is for better or worse, this is what they mean. My wife became the breadwinner, and we agreed I had three years to figure out what I wanted to do next.”
Into the ring
The most natural thing most people in his position would have rushed to do is start a business or find another source of income. Kimani did neither.
“It’s funny how life works. Staying home and binge-watching TV triggered some of my childhood memories. Growing up in the 90s, many of us loved combat and military movies. I always found them fascinating.”
That fascination never really left him. Somewhere in that triggered nostalgia, a forgotten ambition surfaced. Kimani always wanted to train in combat someday. It had sat on his bucket list for decades.
“Even as an adult, combat training was still on my bucket list. Since I suddenly had so much free time, I started visiting gyms to see which ones offered combat classes.”
He’d also started learning how to lift weights because at 150 kilos, he was under no illusions.
“There was no way I was walking into a combat class looking like that; that wasn’t rocket science,” he laughs.
It was during one of these visits that he met a man he refers to as Morris.
“Morris had been to Thailand a couple of times. He’s the one who introduced me to Muay Thai.”
As a martial art, Muay Thai revolves around brutal strikes, close-range combat and relentless conditioning. Rather than being just a punching exercise, people use their whole body as a weapon.
“It’s called the ‘Art of Eight Limbs’ because Muay Thai turns the entire body into a weapon. You are using eight limbs, that is, two fists, two elbows, two knees, and two shins as weapons. These techniques were used centuries ago by Thai soldiers in close combat whenever they had no weapons left.”
Further intrigued, Kimani began training under the tutelage of Morris. But that fascination soon turned into an obsession.
Kimani Macharia during a rope climb training session.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
“We’d looked around, and there was nobody seriously teaching Muay Thai in Nairobi,” he says. “Morris understood the basics, so I learned from him. Sometimes we trained off YouTube tutorials.”
Training with Morris was a start, but Kimani wanted the source. The thrill wasn’t enough.
“In 2014, I booked a flight to Thailand. With Morris’ help, I camped there for a month because I felt I needed to learn the combat from its birthplace.”
He was there for a month absorbing everything. But what he found was not just a sport; it was a culture.
“In Thailand, Muay Thai is a way of life. Every day except Monday, their day of worship, there is a ring fight somewhere in every city. People buy tickets to watch these close combat fights. The gyms there make serious money from staging fights, and even foreigners fly in just to experience those brutal close-range battles.”
By this point, Kimani’s body had already begun to transform, giving way to an impressive, towering physique. Months of lifting and training had chipped away at the 150 kilos. Scouts noticed.
“Because there’s always a fight happening, scouts are constantly looking for fighters. Some had watched me train during that period, and it wasn't long before I was thrown into the ring,” he says.
Because of how lucrative and popular the sport is, for many Africans, Thailand has become both a fighting ground and a place to pursue opportunity.
“It’s easier to make money there, especially if you keep winning. A single win earns you 20,000 Thai baht (Sh80,000), and you are expected to fight almost every week,” he explains. “Thailand is also famous for its recovery treatment and physio work, so fighters can recover ridiculously fast. If you’re winning, you can even have six to eight fights in a month.”
At this point, Kimani seizes the moment to boast of his fighting credentials.
“These are the moments I live for. I started competing professionally at 35. That’s considered very late. I’ve fought guys as young as 18 years old. But to this day, I have never lost a single fight. Seven fights, not in Thailand, where I now travel regularly, nor in East Africa, where the sport is slowly finding its feet.”
The proof is written on his face. Above his left eye sits a reddish scar, vivid enough that you might mistake it for a wound still healing.
“It’s not fresh. Those are battle scars. I nearly lost that eye. I caught an elbow, what fighters call the knife.”
His last fight was in October 2025, against a Nigerian who had held the Phuket Province championship for two straight years.
“I’m very good with kicks, and I use my height to my advantage. Most Muay Thai fighters want to close the distance so they can work your upper body and wear you down. So I developed a habit of attacking with long kicks and flying knee strikes just to keep them at a distance,” he says with a cheeky laugh.
But at 44, Kimani admits the body now negotiates with the heart. His heart would love to keep on fighting.
“A younger fighter is hungry in a different way. A 20-year-old wants to prove something. At 44, I don’t think I need to anymore,” he says.
“And the truth is, I no longer have the same strength and explosiveness I had in my 30s. Injuries also heal more slowly now. Age eventually humbles everyone. What I now do is maintain my physique with a lot of functional and mobility exercises, because I still want to be box jumping in my 70s.”
Kimani Macharia performs a box jump during training.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
His clients
In the end, somewhere in the mix of all that, Kimani says he found his purpose. These days, he still earns a decent living through coaching, but unlike the suited-up IT professional he once was, his days no longer feel heavy.
“I am living in the moment. I am very peaceful. I enjoy what I do.”
Even with his growing clientele of 25, he’s deliberate about who he takes on and why.
“The first thing I always ask anyone who reaches out is: What’s your goal? Are you here to learn the skills, or are you trying to lose weight?”
His reasoning is that “there are many ways to lose weight that don’t require Muay Thai. But learning the skill changes more than your body. It teaches resilience. It changes how you look at life.”
And unlike the desk job that slowly hollowed him out, this, he insists, never gets old.
“Training clients never feels like routine to me because there are always new levels to unlock. Watching someone grow from one stage to another brings me a lot of satisfaction. A case in point is a client I started coaching when he was 45 years old. At 50, he fought his first fight and won,” Kimani says, breaking into laughter. “Do you know how crazy that sounds?”
And on the rare occasion when even that starts to feel like routine, Kimani has another way of waking up his pulse.
“I get on my bike and take long rides. A Kawasaki Ninja 650, big bike, 200 kilometres per hour. That usually takes care of the adrenaline.”
