Your experience matches mine when I changed to keto and then Carnivore-Lite in 2018. I lost 35 pounds, my 45 years of yo-yo diets ended (I was a very fat kid) and most of my belly fat came off.
I am a runner (regardless of weight) and always ran hard - to exhaustion. Last spring, while it seemed crazy, I decided to cut back how far I ran and to also slow down my runs. The idea was to see if I was stressing my body by too hard an exercise, creating too much cortisol that in turn was keeping the remaining fat on me.
6 months later, about half of the remaining body fat is gone. It supports the idea that much of our fat - for those of us who have issues - is based on out of whack hormones, not “lack of willpower”.
A bit atypically, my cholesterol remained about the same. Compared to 2016, my triglycerides are the same (75). LDL is the same (although I think the “LDL” number is actually an estimate derived from the triglyceride level). My total cholesterol went up 15 points but that is because my HDL went up 15 points.
More important, my health is WAY better. I can FEEL it, which is why I’ll never go back. In my upper 60s and some things are showing their age - but in many ways, I feel better now than I did in my 40s!
Sprinting is the best way to get rid of visceral fat. Long distance running is the biggest waste of time.