I'm a 30 year old man, and I just finished my first four weeks of low carb dieting. I had some blood work done earlier in the summer, and my results for HDL/LDL/triglycerides (mg/dL) were 34/98/162. In an attempt to increase the HDL and decrease the triglycerides, I adopted the low carb diet. I went to a nearby clinic to get a simple blood panel done recently, and the new HDL/LDL/triglyceride numbers are 42/164/115.

So while my HDL and triglycerides increased and decreased, respectively, I saw a huge jump in LDL (67%). And my triglycerides are not yet below 100, so I'm not so confident in quickly explaining this away as an error in the LDL calculation.

What options do I have to get my LDL back in line without compromising the nice results I'm seeing with the HDL and triglycerides? In addition to the lipid results, I lost about 7 pounds over the first four weeks of my diet (from 208 to 201 lbs; I'm 6'1" tall).

My breakfast is two scrambled eggs and three small breakfast sausage links. My lunches are grilled chicken salads with low carb dressing. And my dinners vary a great deal, but are most often meat or fish with sauteed vegetables. My snacks during the work day are roasted, salted almonds, and when I get home from work I'll often microwave some pepperoni slices and wrap them in thinly sliced ham and add mustard. I also eat several handfuls of pork rinds at that time. I'll occasionally cheat and have some peanut butter on a rice cake. Over the four weeks, I believe I had dessert three times.

Thanks for your time.

AFAIK, four weeks is not long enough to settle your blood numbers. Also as far as LDL, the size of the LDL particles is what really matters, and LC dieting changes that for the better in most people. Read around the forum and you'll find out more. There's a sticky at the top of this forum that has some info.

Here's a pretty good explanation. It could be like Ilikemice pointed out, you're simply testing too soon:

http://www.trackyourplaque.com/blog...ot-fit-all.html

Another explanation is that thyroid hormones can get a little wonky on low carb. You can produce more RT3 than free T3 and that can cause LDL to increase.

Retest in 6 months.