When I was 25 I had a body fat percentage under 15%, and was in the best shape of my life, at 180lbs and 6’ 2” doing 5 hours of weight lifting and cardio a week. My total cholesterol was still about 215. By 45 the job had edged out exercise almost completely and cholesterol had climbed to 260 — with simvastatin it is now 160. Remember that blood serum cholesterol is produced by the body to repair arterial walls, nerve cells, create bile for digestion, etc. It has very little to do with what you eat, except in that a high fat diet causes the body to under produce bile which leaves more cholesterol lying around. This is why adding fiber to your diet is the first thing doctors recommend — it carries bile out of your digestive tract and more cholesterol is used up replacing the lost bile. Statins reduce the amount your body produces, but unfortunately also reduces some enzymes whose reduction results in muscle pain as this article says.
Here's another source of statins you may not have expected ~ milk and other dairy byproducts.