Lost 79 pounds and my cholesterol is worse

Do you regularly exercise? That seems to help more with changing blood cholesterol than weight I've noticed. Also, the RATIO of HDL to LDL has been shown to be more important than the absolute LDL number in several studies, so if your HDL is high too, may not be much of an issue. Yes, it could be genetics too, in fact I remember reading a study showing certain people who have not been able to manage it with diet, exercise and weight management and still have high cholesterol may have no greater risk than a "normal" cholesterol level of those who improve through all those measures. Maybe do a search for this.