By SUSAN LEATHERS

The person at the heart of our Be Healthy Challenge is Renee Yarbrough. Learn why she is so passionate about wellness in today’s profile.

The third annual Be Healthy Challenge hosted by Brentwood Home Page and sponsored the past two years by Swiftwick and Mountain High Outfitters is a third of the way through its 12-week mission: To help its participants become strong, healthier individuals through teamwork, education and accountability.

The person who is at the heart of the Challenge is Renee Yarbrough, who has served as its administrator since its conception. Renee’s personal story, and why she sees the BHC as a ministry, is an inspiring one in its own right.

Renee Yarbrough’s life has traveled many roads, literally and figuratively. She grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, then went to college in Portland, Ore., and earned a degree in ministerial counseling. After graduation, she landed in Nashville, where she worked at Lipscomb University before marrying and starting a family.

Over the next several decades, her family moved all around the country before settling back in the Nashville area in 1999. Today the 59-year-old photographer and “serial entrepreneur” loves living a healthy life.

You have been through a lot of life changes and challenges in the past few years. How did they make you realize that your own health and wellness needed to be a priority?

There comes a point for most of us when health becomes an issue. It may steadily crawl up on a person after years of neglect or might be a moment of crisis, but when that moment comes, it is illuminating. We realize in that moment that the drift we have enjoyed has taken us far from the harbor of health and wellness. As we look around to an unfamiliar landscape of medications, anxiety, flab and fatigue, it becomes alarming to see how far the drift has taken us. And then we begin to wonder how difficult and how painful it will be to get back.

That was my story. I was slim, healthy, active, athletic. Then life happened, and somewhere along the way I got so caught up in crisis management that taking care of myself was no longer on the list of things to do. Although I was expecting my body to continue to work as always, I was no longer slim, not healthy, not active and not athletic. I had drifted.

I love the story that Warren Buffet tells about the car-fairy coming to visit him at 16, saying he can have any car he wants, but it will be the only car he receives for his whole life.

Mr. Buffet tells of the care and love this only life-long car would receive — how it would be garaged, carefully looked after and tended. The end of the story transfers the idea of getting only one car in life to the reality of getting only one body for life. We might be able to run it into the ground for a while but then what are we left with for the remainder of our life?

Before the Be Healthy Challenge, you helped organize a similar program. What was the impetus for that?

In 2008, I was working with local TV personality Debbie Alan on her new internet radio show, On the HomeStretch. NBC’s The Biggest Loser had reached national attention, and we decided to create a local version, concentrating on internal health and wellness instead of pounds lost.

Concern over my own heart issues pushed me to start the HomeStretch HealthQuest. In those days, I was a single mom of five who lived in the car, most days while barely breathing. Fast food was our meal of choice; grocery shopping, menus and cooking was not in my vocabulary.

It was incredibly rewarding, seeing 22 women work out together five mornings a week at D1 Sports Training in Cool Springs. Although the women were split into the Pink Team and the Red Team, they were one in spirit, working toward health and wellness.

For two seasons of the HomeStretch HealthQuest, participants got off of blood pressure medicine, came back from depression, and learned how to live a healthy lifestyle.

In 2012, you approached Brentwood Home Page about doing the Be Healthy Challenge. Why?

Although Debbie Alan’s radio show closed its doors, the concept of pursuing health and wellness with a team competition model stayed alive in my head. It seemed like the model could easily be transferred to an online newspaper. After many talks with Susan Leathers and Kelly Gilfillan, the first Be Healthy Challenge was launched in February 2012.

One thing I know about humans is this: we do better in groups, with accountability and community. And we even love competition. We work harder when straining to be the best is somehow woven into our efforts. And so, the Be Healthy Challenge works. It works for others just the same as it works for me.

Why is the Be Healthy Challenge different than just a weight-loss contest?

Inside health is the gold standard; weight is a by-product. Our society has made weight the gold standard. Changing our society’s opinions about health and wellness is an education process, and I’m hoping our children will care more about a non-medicated, active lifestyle than weight and pant sizes.

Also, the Be Healthy Challenge is designed to be a grass-roots effort to get the residents of Williamson County to look at health as a community endeavor. We can be healthy as a community.

What’s your favorite thing about being its administrator?

The participants of the Be Healthy Challenge see the progress and read the blogs of the people on their team, but I get to hear all the stories and track all the progress. It is wonderfully satisfying to see people come to health after years of being unhealthy.

I also personally love the science of change. Having a program that implements that science into changing habits and changing mindsets is very fulfilling.

I’ve learned that no one can exercise themselves into health. Exercise is a component of wellness, but without great fuel, the body can’t be healthy. Wellness happens on a cellular level and there are no shortcuts to this process.

Is there one experience (or two) in the past three years that makes you smile?

Every time I see a Be Healthy Challenge participant decide to take ownership of their health and wellness, it makes me smile. And cry. Every time.

This is the first year you have not participated as a team member. Do you miss it?

I miss it terribly! I will be working out with a different team every week, but the community that comes from being a teammate is priceless. The upside of not being on a team is getting to spend time with every team, which I’m looking forward to.

What are the biggest personal lessons you’ve learned from the Be Healthy Challenge and the HomeStretch HealthQuest?

America is headed toward a health crisis. We have a voice in this; we can be part of the problem or part of the solution, and it starts with standing up and making a change for ourselves, then for our family and finally for our community.

Through the educational efforts of so many people and programs, my eating habits have changed dramatically. Food that has been raised or grown responsibly is now my choice. No longer do I take for granted that all food available is good for the body. I research, compare and ask questions.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Williamson County could be the beacon of hope for the rest of America?