Cholesterol levels. Exercise "v" eating fat.

Fatamorgana

What, I wonder, would be the likely difference between my HDL, LDL and Triglycerides levels, comparing a normal summer's five-ish months of club and personal cycling whilst average of 12hrs riding a week plus some sportives etc on a strict very low fat diet, and those levels a year later, when I ate a large, traditional cooked "English" breakfast each & every morning followed by the world's supply of buttery / magazine flapjack throughout each day whilst cycle touring over 4000 miles during a similar time frame?

Will the levels vary much?

hypster

joe2008 wrote:

Levels should be better after you stopped all that low fat stuff, so the cycle tour will have been beneficial.*

* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29616418

This is the conclusion I came to a few years back after reading a lot of conflicting advice about cholesterol and saturated fat. Butter for instance seemed to cause far less problems than all the "healthy" margerines that we have been encouraged to eat for years. Eggs also have now proved not to be any problem and are actually recommended by the British Heart Foundation.

http://www.bhf.org.uk/default.aspx?page=12920

Sugar and processed carbohydrates are now beginning to be recognised as the major problem in our diet. In combination with saturated fats in cakes, biscuits and a lot of processed foods, they are the type of food to steer clear of.

DeVlaeminck

Yes his cholesterol may be better but he'll have early stage bowel cancer because of all the fried bacon in the English breakfast.

Fatamorgana

Unlikely one four month bike ride will result in any early stage anything but weight loss and a lowering of my body fat %, down to 14.6%. Sadly, this is proving difficult to sustain, likewise the physical output.

The bacon had one side effect, not having to add salt to the food, along with the occasional bag of crisps.
No sausages in my b'fasts, nor fried bread ..... there are limits! A beer on an evening, which can adversely affect Tri levels, so we're told.

Rice over pasta over bread over chips, though anyone who has cycled through Scotland will attest to, they do so love everything with chips and a white bread bun with no choose of rice or noodles even. Around the rest of Britain, there are invariably other options, including baked potatoes for lunch, fairly early on, refusing to eat Ginster’s “anything" and no more chips, please, but sometimes, you have no options. I do not eat chocolate, biscuits, cake (and such-like) and have 1x brown sugar in my daily cuppa, but flapjack and muesli bars I scoffed to “feed the machine”.

2012:
HDL - 1.54
LDL - 2.43
Tri - 1.17

Total - 4.5

2014:
HDL - 1.73
LDL - 2.55
Tri - 0.93

Ratio: 2.7 and a total of 4.7.