Curious, what was it about gorging at dinner time that messed up your cholesterol levels? Was it because you'd gorge on foods high in cholesterol, or was there another mechanism at play?
That said, cholesterol is essential for the production of bile which breaks down foods. Late night foods probably equates to excess cholesterol released to break down said foods and higher cholesterol levels.
We probably want to have periods of fasting in order to not produce excess cholesterol.
So maybe the person fasting had higher cholesterol levels due to his body needing more bile immediately to breakdown a larger amount of food at once? I am very much not a doctor or at all educated in these topics.