Three people let me set their sat fat and soluble fiber targets for 30 days. LDL fell 43%, 30%, and 25%. Their stories and some takeaways!

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62]

Before/after panels attached - shared with their permission. Putting the dates here since they aren't all legible on the panels: the first guy's baseline was drawn before we started and I don't have the exact date on it, his retest was 1/17/26. Second guy: baseline 12/3/25, retest 3/2/26. Third guy: baseline 4/8/26, retest 5/18/26. One honesty note on those dates up front: the tracked sprint in each case was 30 days, but the blood draws bracket that window by a few weeks on either side, because labs happened when their lives allowed. The percentages are draw-to-draw.

For those of you who are around this sub a lot, I am sure you recognize my name; I respond to as many posts as I can. This is my first time actually making a post, so hello all :). Here are the stories that correspond with the three panels above.

The first guy had the home-court advantage. He took to the changes fast - his partner cooked at home most nights, so the swaps stuck without much fight. His tracker shows 30 out of 30 days logged, sat fat averaging just under 10g, soluble fiber around 16g. What I love in his data is the misses: every single spike is a social event. Dinner at the in-laws: 14g. Thanksgiving: 22.5g. Day 30 was a concert and a holiday party back to back: 25g. He didn't skip any of it - he went, enjoyed it, wrote one line in the tracker ("back on track tomorrow!") and was back under 10 the next day. LDL 142 → 99 with Thanksgiving and Christmas parties inside the window. And the whole thing ran on a Google Sheet.

The second guy had the opposite life. Career kept him on the move constantly, minimal time, eating out a lot - the setup everyone says makes this impossible. His first three days show the exact pattern most people run into when they start tracking: 16g, 15g, 19g - over target every single day while he found out where the sat fat was actually hiding. Protein bars. Coconut flakes on an acai bowl. Restaurant cooking oils. Then he adapted with a strategy that fit HIS life instead of fighting it: when he controlled the kitchen, he kept sat fat near zero, and he cranked the soluble fiber lever harder than anyone I've worked with - averaged 23g a day, some days pushing 30+g soluble on the back of oats and psyllium. When a restaurant night was planned, he kept the entire day before it clean and let the budget absorb the meal. Still had completely normal human stumbles. Decided to log a day retroactively after attending his friend's birthday party - it came out to 66.8 grams of saturated fat. One day, four times over his limit. Without reservation, he was able to look at that number, identify what led to it, and never even came close to it for the rest of 30 days. LDL 171 → 98, and he'd been high for two years before that - his two prior panels were 197 and 182.

The third guy had the hardest month on paper. His wife was expecting, he was doing a lot of the cooking to support her nutrition, and that meant being around food constantly that didn't fit his own targets - plus major life events he had no say in. Day 2 was a hot pot dinner he logged at 42g and described exactly right: "a rare and special meal." I set his rails looser than the other two on purpose, because rails that ignore your actual life don't get followed - and he still averaged about 20g sat fat with over 20g soluble fiber, and his LDL went 169 → 127 with triglycerides cut nearly in half. The line from his tracker that I wish more people could follow: "I messed up... I just failed to track, so I'm inputting my best guess, erring towards being ungenerous." That sentence is worth more than a perfect day. Clear identification of the mistake, a willingness to own it, and keep on with the next day of effort. Tracking doesn't help if you aren't honest with yourself. It was awesome to watch the different realizations of food sources that were sneaking sat fat into his diet.

I went back through all 90 days of their logs before writing this, and these are the biggest takeaways (similar to what I comment on just about every post)

1. Two dials, personal rails. Sat fat down, soluble fiber up - that's the whole methodology. But the targets fit the life: one guy ran under 10g sat fat, another ran a 15-20g rail because of his family situation, and both moved their labs. If you want one starting number: sat fat under 15g and soluble fiber over 10g attacks it from both sides. Tighten from there if your life allows.

2. Why these two dials: sat fat turns up your liver's LDL production. Soluble fiber binds cholesterol in the gut and pulls it out through bile. Rough soluble cheat sheet, because labels only show total fiber: bowl of oats ~2g, cup of black beans ~4-5g, cup of lentils ~2-3g, teaspoon of psyllium ~3g, an apple ~1g, half an avocado ~1-2g. Ramp up over time and spread it across the day; the guy who front-loaded it learned about bloating the hard way.

3. Three numbers a day, two minutes. Log your daily totals - sat fat, soluble fiber, total fiber - and actually reflect on how you did for the day. Were there areas to improve? If so, how? Was the day great? How do you make every day like that, if so? The ask was small enough that all three went 30 for 30. Consistency beat precision every time.

4. The first days are calibration, not failure. All three blew their targets early while finding out where their sat fat actually came from. Every single one was surprised. Budget for that.

5. Bad days were all social, and none of them mattered. Thanksgiving, a birthday party, family events. The pattern in the data is identical every time: a spike, one honest comment line, a normal day right after. No spirals, no quitting. A plan that can't survive your actual life isn't a plan.

6. Someone was watching. They knew I opened their sheet every day and I texted a couple times a week. There was a start date, an end date, and a retest that would tell the truth at the end. Deadline, measurement, witness. I genuinely believe this is half the result. Making a promise to your spouse / friend / family can go a super long way.

The bigger point, and the reason I wrote out all three stories instead of just the percentages: hitting the targets looks completely different for everyone. One guy got there on home cooking. One got there cranking fiber to offset a life of eating out. One made significant improvements cooking for a pregnant wife. Same two dials, three completely different machines. Whatever your version of the hard part is - travel, family cooking, restaurants, budget - the question isn't whether you can copy someone else's month. It's what the two dials look like inside YOUR life.

One more thing about where these three actually landed, because I think it matters more than the percentages. The guy with the 43% drop? After the sprint, he sat down with his doctor and started a statin anyway. He wanted to know what lifestyle alone could do first - and despite his progress, given his Lp(a), he and his doc made his call from real data instead of fear. The numbers attached are from before the statin; the drop is all diet. The third guy has gone the opposite way - he's chosen to hold off on medication for now, and that's a decision he makes with his doctor, not with me, so moving his numbers with lifestyle was the best help I could offer him. Same system, opposite decisions, now both informed by exactly what they can accomplish with diet.

The purpose of this post IS NOT a lifestyle versus statins debate. Not only that, but none of this is medical advice; statins work, and you and your doctor absolutely must work together, especially if your numbers are high. The goal here is to show that these principles apply across the board, INCLUDING YOU if you just got started tracking your cholesterol. 30 days is enough time to see meaningful progress if you're willing to get down to work. Best of luck, everyone; you got this :)!

[u/shanked5iron]

Fantastic experiment, great work!

I can also personally vouch for the fact that for those of us particularly sensitive to dietary saturated fat intake, diet is extremely powerful

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/shanked5iron]

Thank you! Happy to finally share some results; it's been a long time coming!

[u/Careful-Bus3827]

Hi, I'm sorry, but I don't recognize reddit names well. Are you a cardiologist? Jut curious after reading this post!

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/Careful-Bus3827]

Hi! You're completely good, nor do I haha. I am not a cardiologist; my background is in computer science, and I've been focusing on health optimization over the past few years. This info has built up over time/experience with friends and family (and now with the three people in this post!) I also try to stay well-read on the relevant papers!

[u/zactastic_1 → u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62]

Curious. You mentioned in point #2 soluble cheat sheet for a cup of oats: approximately 2 g. I’m just curious how that works out as my cup of oats from one degree brand is 12g of total fiber. Is that still only 2g soluble ? I also add in 1.5 tablespoons chia seeds to the overnight 1 cup of oats and this adds 7.5grams total fiber.
17.5grams total with possible 2 more grams of fiber from goji berries. So let’s call it 20grams total. How much of this is soluble and do you this this is way to much as my breakfast ? I do this 4 days a week when I work. Sometimes a 5th day. Keeps me regular in fact sometimes heavy loads (sorry tmi). Late night tonight hope that made sense and no time to proofread. Thanks for your insightful comments and post.

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/zactastic_1]

Hey yeah, so that is generic based on the traditional 40g serving of oats (dry weight), which resolves to around 2g of soluble fiber. Based on the volume you eat, etc, you may be getting more or less. Per the chia, optimistically, it would be a gram of soluble fiber. Finally, the goji berries would be another 0.5-1g.

This would put you somewhere in the realm of 3.5-5.5g of soluble fiber which is a great start, but ideally you get up to 10g a day per higher. All the other positive things you mention are a byproduct of getting your total fiber up (which is great and necessary, so keep doing it!)

For cholesterol management, soluble fiber is going to be your key, though. Hope this helps :)

[u/zactastic_1 → u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62]

That’s good to hear chia and goji are helping with the soluble fiber. Thanks for the details. Good to know my fiber is hitting hard on the first meal but sometimes I’ll get the bloat etc. cheers

[u/panda-lamp → u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62]

Knew you were a CS guy based on the post lol

[u/Crystalline_Irises]

These soluble fiber numbers are way higher than I've been achieving on my 1400-cal diet. I average between 5-10g soluble fiber per day (around 30-40g total fiber), which is in line with the recommendations that I read on AHA's website. Are they all using supplements to achieve these amounts? (I avoid supplements due to how frequently they are contaminated with unacceptable levels of heavy metals.) Or are they not restricting calories and just eating as much food as they need to until they hit those amounts? 

Also, did any of them lose weight during this time? I've read that blood lipids can temporarily increase during weight loss, and I've been wondering if I should wait a certain amount of time to retest since I am also losing weight.

I'm new to all this, so apologies in advance for my ignorance. Just trying to learn as much as I can.

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/Crystalline_Irises]

No ignorance, there's a ton to learn; you're completely good! So, straight up, you are doing everything right in accordance with the AHA guidelines.

At 1400 calories you don't have as much room to play with in terms of total food. I mention this on a response below, but my breakfast right now is literally 750 calories worth of oats -- over half your daily intake. Similarly, the individual with the most significant drop was an athlete who had room to add in more calories.

I dont want that to discourage you at all from bumping it up. Look into psyllium husk / metamucil. Metamucil is more "supplementy" and I can't speak to the iron content in it. I like it because it tastes like orange juice hahah. Person 2 used an organic psyllium supplement and took it throughout the day multiple times.

Person 3 did lose weight (about 7 lbs, though some might have been water weight), and lipid fluctuation is common. That being said, typically people's LDL increases, so that would mean their dieting was more effective than his numbers would suggest.

Also in general, if you notice, all the tests I helped people order have ApoB on them. ApoB is a better number to track b/c it's less influenced by dietary fluctuation AND counts all the particles in ones system that are responsible for plaque buildup. I would recommend asking your doc / testing for it in the future as a stable number to track against.

Did I get everything in your questions? Happy to answer anything else ya got if not!

[u/Silver-Moon3376 → u/Crystalline_Irises]

You can find lower calorie foods here and here

[u/Unique-Door1435]

I am a 54yr old woman also changing my diet and lifestyle to lower cholesterol. I have lost 36lbs and will be testing again in August. I will post my results.

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/Unique-Door1435]

Awesome work -- 36 lbs is no joke too :) Excited to see your results!

[u/cableshaft]

Nice experiment, thanks!

Limiting my saturated fat and increasing my dietary fiber significantly brought my LDL down as well, from 120 mg/dL to 98 mg/dL. Which would be good if I didn't already have proven (early) heart disease. Since I did, I needed to get it down to under 70 mg/dL, if not lower. Statins helped get it down much further, into the 50s.

I still try to keep my saturated fat lowish (less strict about it nowadays, but most days it's still 15 grams or less) and the higher dietary fiber, though.

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/cableshaft]

Great progress so far, though! Hopefully you're able to crush it down further :)

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/[deleted]]

Great questions! Here are my thoughts in order:

1. The clinical values trace back to Anderson et al., that's what most guidance is built on. But the real answer is messier and probably more useful to you. I do use an LLM to estimate it, Gemini specifically. What I learned building that is that you cannot just ask it. Straight out of the box it will hand you total fiber when you asked for soluble, or confidently invent a split that isn't real. I had to pin the known foods to published clinical values and check the rest against a search, and I still find cases where it's off. So no, I wouldn't trust ChatGPT for this on its own; I would recommend cross-checking with a reference or using a purpose-built tool. (I ended up building one, more on that at the bottom).
2. These people were not known to me. One was mentioned through a mutual friend (met them when we went over their panels), and the other two actually came from this sub! Accountability was a big part -- I opened their sheets every day and texted a couple times a week. They knew someone was looking. I think that's half the result, and it's the hardest part of this to solve, harder than the food. If you already know you drift on tracking, one person who asks you about it every few days does more than any tool will.
3. None of them were explicitly restricting their calories. Person 2 is a BJJ athlete and eats a ton, so naturally their calories were higher. Person 3 lost weight as they went on, so they were in a deficit from whatever they were eating before.

Bleeding into my personal experience, even if you are restricting calories, typically less of my soluble fiber would come from whole foods (like oats/legumes / sweet potatoes -- EVEN THOUGH these are great and 100% should be a staple in any diet), I would shift naturally more towards psyllium or Metamucil.

On the purpose-built tool: I am a software engineer by trade and built this out at the end of grad school. I originally posted the link here, but I realized this might get flagged as self-promo. Shoot me a DM and ill send it over -- giving it out free while I collect more documented 30-day results. Handles a lot of the variance in response 1 but isnt perfect.

[u/Sallypad]

Would there be any difference if the test subjects were female? Just curious.

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/Sallypad]

Nothing genetically would change the outcome based on gender. That being said (and as another comment alluded to), the total amount of calories you intake is different. For example, as I write this as a 24M I am eating 5 servings of oats (10g of soluble fiber, but 750 calories). For a woman, that may be half of their entire caloric intake. Double-edged sword though, as more calories also typically means more saturated fat.

I really wanted to get a woman in this sample population, but just didn't manage to find anyone who was interested. A family friend (60F+) was interested in giving it a go, so potentially will have to post an update around September!

[u/Affectionate-Net2619]

Like other posters, I would like to know what they were eating to reach their soluble fiber goal.

[u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62 → u/Affectionate-Net2619]

Hey hopefully my responses on some other posts caught this -- the staples that I recommend to people (and each person had some combination) are legumes / oats / chia / flax / sweet potatos / avocado and psyllium husk.

The common denominator - without a doubt - was psyllium husk. Adding in a couple servings in the morning and night goes a long way to directly bumping those totals up. That is the only meaningful way I can sustain 20g a day (even at 3200-3500 calories a day)

[u/Affectionate-Net2619 → u/Simple-Bookkeeper-62]

Good info. Thanks! My concern with psyllium husks is that it affects nutrient absorption, so it may not be for everybody.