America’s Fittest Truck Driver Tells Us How to Get Fit in 4 Minutes!

Yale graduate and now the “fittest truck driver in America” Siphiwe Baleka (formerly named Anthony Blake) is the author of the forthcoming book 4-MINUTE FIT: The Metabolism Accelerator for the Time-Crunched, Deskbound, and Stressed Out (Touchstone; on-sale March 28, 2017). {Book provided for review/feature consideration}


A Fox Sports Emmy Award-winning documentary on Siphiwe Baleka’s story called “Changing Lanes” can be watched HERE.

While studying at Yale, Baleka was a competitive NCAA Division I swimmer with aspirations of making the U.S. Olympic swim team. However, his dreams were dashed when he failed to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trails by just 0.8 seconds in the 100-meter freestyle. Yet, in 2008, eager to travel across the United States, he became a long-distance truck driver. His health suffered as a result. Within weeks, he gained 15 pounds. He became determined to take control of his health and help countless other truckers struggling with the same issues reclaim their well-being. (86% of American truck drivers are overweight, and 69% are obese, ranking trucking among our country’s least healthy industries.)


Baleka founded Fitness Trucking and became the full-time fitness coach for Prime Inc., one of the nation’s largest trucking companies. He has since helped thousands of Prime’s long-haul truck drivers with his 13-week nutrition and exercise plan. His program’s success has gone on to make headlines, putting Baleka on the map as the “fittest truck driver in America” and earning Prime the “Healthiest Company Award” at the 2014 CES/Digital Health Summit.


But Baleka’s plan is not just for truck drivers—it’s for all of sedentary Americans who sit most of the day.


Baleka demonstrates his intense 1-minute workout he does in place at truck stops to stay fit (Go to 5-minute mark and watch here!), discusses his remarkable story, and offers his tips from his flexible yet powerful plan to boost metabolism:

• Get 4 minutes of rigorous exercise a day: Walk briskly around the block, run in place, or do jumping jacks or crunches in your office. For the time-crunched, this rigorous activity will spike your metabolism and burn fat at an accelerated rate for the short and long term. Burning extra calories is an added bonus and you should ease into getting up to fifteen minutes of rigorous exercise daily.

• Spike your metabolism every 3 hours with food. To keep your metabolism running hot, eat breakfast and then eat a healthy snack every three hours. Limit carbs and stick to protein. A handful of almonds, a low-fat cheese stick, and tuna are great examples of between-meal snacks for on-the-go people. Surprisingly, most truck drivers (and many other people) only eat one or two meals a day. While they may overeat at these meals, their nutrition for the day or entire week is actually insufficient.

• Sleep the pounds off. That’s right, insufficient sleep—and not just diet alone—contributes to weight gain. Without adequate sleep, your body can’t regulate food intake properly. With sleep deprivation, the hormone ghrelin (the “hunger hormone”) is not produced in the right amount. The hormone leptin (which signals to the brain that the stomach is full) is also low and the body loses the ability to regulate metabolism.