I would give it roughly a few months. They are generally very stable and
vary little over months. Triglycerides are somewhat more volatile. It is
very difficult to get major changes with diet alone. Life style changes are
often difficult to sustain for long periods of time as any weight loss
program shows. If you have diseases such as diabetes or hypertension then
levels need to be reduced to much lower levels making diet by itself almost
impossible to obtain that type of reduction alone.
Usually when lipid panels are done and they are high the doctor will try
diet alone to see how well you can do with it before prescribing meds. That
is the time to really clamp down on diet.
It really is unproductive to blame it all on diet or lack of exercise.
Phase two involves getting put on meds or rationalizing your high
cholesterol and ignoring it based on the book "myths of cholesterol".
Most people with CAD will have high lipid problems but not all people with
high lipids will have heart attacks so there are people taking meds who do
not need to. The only problem is that they don't know how to separate them
out yet.