OA Onset and Lifestyle Change

After I was diagnosed with OA, I learned that people predisposed to the disease should try to get regular exercise and maintain a good weight.

Most of my life, my weight has been good and I was active. Though I was never a gym-goer or a runner, I walked, hiked, and biked often when the weather was nice.  My regular exercise came from chores and childcare: lifting kids, making beds, cleaning floors, washing laundry, painting walls, hauling drywall and lumber, climbing into weird positions to get under a sink to fix a leak, climbing onto roofs. The rest came from my favorite hobby – gardening.

Gardening, at least the kind I do, involves lifting, turning, twisting, pulling, pushing everything - weeds, plants, mulch, stones, limbs, stumps. It’s better than a workout at the gym because it’s outdoors, under the sun, surrounded by all of the scents of nature.

Moving, staying active always felt good to me and I had lived most of my life in the South where winters are short.  A move North changed that.  I lacked winter sport skills.  There were no easily accessible athletic clubs, pools, or gyms where I could do indoor exercise, no malls to walk.  In addition, I started a new job, a great job, the job I always thought I wanted and one that required me to sit for many hours every day.  The impact on my body was slow but insidious.
My aches and pains increased.  Rest, the solutions to pain of overexertion, did not stop the ache but it did relieve some of the fatigue caused by pain.  What I did not consider is that both ache and fatigue might have improved if I had worked harder to get exercise.  Instead, I imagined that something else was wrong with me - female problems perhaps, menopause.  The thought that i might have arthritis never occured to me. 

I was a creature of habit.  My environment changed.  My habits didn't adapt to the change.  As a result, aches and pain became more common.  Fatigue was huge.  I did not sleep well at night.  My weight began to increase.  It was all depressing.  I knew something was wrong but could not yet see that it was my lifestyle.

What about you? Did you have a change in lifestyle that came before your OA began to cause problems? What kind of change was it?