New here, 24 lbs down, LDL up

Sep 11 1997 views 14 posts

Hey all, long-time lurker, first post. I'm 41, two kids, and I work nights at a distribution warehouse, so eating is mostly whatever survives the week — some app tracking, gym when the schedule allows, sleep is a coin flip. Down about 24 lbs since March, and the pants fitting again is the only number I actually care about. The one thing bugging me: yearly bloodwork came back with LDL higher than last time and my doctor did the whole let's recheck in a few months thing. Anyone else see cholesterol go sideways while the scale goes the other direction? Not trying to spiral, just curious.

Welcome. My LDL did the asme in the first 20 lbs: 112 to 141. Trigs fell 170 to 88. It settled around week 28, no med changes.

The trig drop is the win. LDL alone during active fat loss is noisy. What was your weight trend the week before each draw?

Week 28 comes up a lot in these threads. The part people forget is that even after 19 weeks of tracking labs, the lipid numbers often still haven't settled — LDL up 22, HDL barely moving is the pattern that keeps showing up. Following this.

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Saturated fat jump would do it for me. I swapped butter back to olive oil and LDL came down 18 points in 8 weeks. Not saying that's your case.

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I'm 41, started 205, down 24 lbs in 18 weeks. LDL 105→132, then back to 111 after I stopped losing. Same fat-loss pattern.

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I had almost the same arc — LDL 112 to 141 around week 14, then back to 124 once my weight had been stable for about two months. My doc wasn't thrilled but said active fat loss can mess with the panel because cholesterol is moving around. Waist down 3.5 inches and trigs halving is a big deal, honestly.

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The sat fat piece was my issue too. I was doing 'whole food' but way more cheese, full-fat yogurt, and ribeye than before. I added 30g fiber most days — oats, beans, psyllium — and swapped half the cheese for salmon or chicken. LDL came down 18 points over the next 4 months. Are you tracking saturated fat grams or just eyeballing it?

Trigs 188→94 and HDL up is a huge flip. I'd be way more hyped about that than one LDL number.

Mine tracked a brutal work stretch more than anything. For six weeks I was sleeping 5.5 hrs, cortisol through the roof, LDL hung around 145. Once sleep got back to 7.5 and I stopped doing 6 pm espresso, it dropped to 128 with no food changes. Not saying that's your situation, just something nobody warned me about.

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Maintaining two years now, and night shifts were my wild card too. The tracking shift that helped me was writing down the time of my last meal, not just totals. When I ate my main meal at 2am and nothing until 2pm, my labs looked rough. When I flipped to a real meal before shift and just yogurt/berries at 4am, my next panel was cleaner. Not saying it fixes LDL, but it’s a variable most apps ignore. Are you logging meal timing or just totals?

Congrats on 24 down! Quick question: were both LDL draws true fasting, same time of day? My local pharmacy tech pointed out mine wasn’t—I’d had coffee with cream at 4am after a shift and called it fasting. Once I switched to right after waking, water only, the number looked a lot different. Now I snap a pic of the lab slip and note last meal/draw time in my app. Insurance never asks, but it keeps me from comparing apples to oranges. Were yours both morning draws at the same lab?

Dorm protein hack: eggs and tuna. Pants fitting > any lab number, honestly.

Nice work. The lab quirk for me was timing vs weight loss: LDL rose 21 pts during the steep-loss stretch, then fell 14 once I’d been weight-stable for ~8 weeks. What correlated for me wasn’t total calories but saturated fat and fiber — easy to let cheese, jerky, and grab-and-go protein creep up. If your panel includes ApoB, that was less noisy for me than LDL. What’s your default 2 a.m. meal now? That’s usually where my numbers snuck in.