LDL went up after 3 months — normal?

2026-08-26 1260 views 12 posts
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sarah-white49 OP
#1
2026-08-26 12:56

Hi everyone, I'm Sarah, 44, I work nights as a hospital unit scheduler and have two teenagers who eat like locusts, so my own meals were always the afterthought. Since late January I've been tracking everything — food, sleep, training, the whole boring spreadsheet — and I'm down about 15 pounds, and honestly my knees and my sleep have never been better.

Got my bloodwork back this week and my LDL is up, which nobody mentioned could happen — my doctor just said keep losing and we'll recheck, which is fine but not really an answer. Did anybody else's cholesterol get weird during the active losing phase and then calm down? Trying not to spiral about it.

f
fit_jose
#2
2026-08-26 14:30

I saw the same thing around week 10. LDL rose while trigs fell. My doctor said weight loss can mobilize cholesterol, but we just watched the trend.

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s_c_71
#3
2026-08-26 15:32

How fast are you losing? Mine spiked when I was dropping 1.5 lbs/week, then settled once weight stabilized.

c
cosmo_research
#4
2026-08-28 11:02

Wait, trigs down and LDL up? That’s usually a good direction overall. Did your HDL move at all?

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markLee831
#5
2026-08-28 14:48

Opposite pattern in the labs I've been tracking — LDL came down, but fasting glucose went weird for about a month. Bodies are annoying.

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susan30
#6
2026-08-28 15:31

The 1.5 lbs/week pace could matter. I added more nuts and olive oil and my LDL jumped too; cut back and it fell.

j
journey_tariq
#7
2026-08-28 20:32

The fats thing can matter, but for me the bigger issue was standard LDL vs ApoB during active loss. I started at 232 and lost 30 lbs over 5 months. My LDL went from 105 to 132 around month 3, then back to 118 after I held weight for 8 weeks. Trigs kept falling.

My PCP wasn’t worried because ApoB and inflammation markers stayed decent. I’m not saying ignore it — just that one LDL number during a 14-week cut is a moving target. Are you testing ApoB or just standard panel? That helped me see the whole picture.

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daniel290
#8
2026-08-31 01:42

Trigs of 95 is the dream. Mine came back 160 on the last panel and just sat there staring at me.

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markLee831
#9
2026-09-20 03:03

ApoB testing changed how I read my LDL too. My standard LDL looked bad but ApoB was fine.

c
cosmo_research
#10
2026-09-20 15:18

If ApoB is fine, maybe it’s carb-driven. Are you eating fewer carbs? That can drop trigs fast but sometimes LDL rises, especially if you’re a hyper-responder.

m
markLee831
#11
2026-09-27 18:16

Carbs weren’t it for me. The culprit was coffee. Not the caffeine, the unfiltered stuff.

I was drinking 4 French press cups a day and LDL shot up 30 points. Switched to paper filter and it came down over 8 weeks.

I know it sounds weird, but there are studies on cafestol. My trigs didn’t change much. If you’re doing French press or espresso, maybe look at that.

For me, tracking ApoB and waiting until weight was stable made sense.

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s_c_71
#12
2026-09-28 15:30

The coffee tip is wild. Ten weeks of logging food and sleep and my next panel is 3 weeks out. This thread is making me less nervous.

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