When you are overweight or obese, your cholesterol levels can become unbalanced. What we mean by imbalance is that your bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein) and triglyceride levels may go up, while your good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein) levels may go down. Since your body relies on good cholesterol to remove bad cholesterol from your body, an increase in bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol means that your blood has too much cholesterol circulating, which can build up inside your blood vessels.