Gwen Shamblin Lara was an American author and founder of the Christian diet program The Weigh Down Workshop and founder of the Remnant Fellowship Church. The most distinctive aspect of her writing is its combination of weight loss programs with Christianity.

Lara was raised in a Church of Christ family. She had two children and seven grandchildren.

 As of March 1996, Gwen lived with her family in Ashlawn, a historic mansion in Brentwood, Tennessee, that was built in 1838.

In 2018 she married Joe Lara.

On May 29, 2021, Gwen died alongside six other church leaders, including her husband Joe Lara and son-in-law Brandon Hannah, when N66BK, her 1982 Cessna Citation 501 private jet, bound for Palm Beach, Florida, crashed into Percy Priest Lake near Smyrna, Tennessee shortly after takeoff.