She thought it was jaundice. The real reason her skin changed color was in her lunchbox.

t’s a well-known fact that eating vegetables is good for you, but one woman’s story, which is gaining new traction online, is a visual reminder that you can, in fact, have too much of a good thing.

A Reddit user named u/AhsewkaTano shared her experience of eating cottage cheese and baby carrots for lunch every single day. She estimated her daily carrot intake was around 300 grams—which, as she discovered, was more than enough to produce a bizarre side effect.

The change was so gradual she didn't notice it in the mirror. The moment of realization came when she saw a photograph of herself.

"It's not a harmful condition. But aesthetically, I didn't want to be the only orange person in photos," she shared in a comment on her Reddit thread. "The left pic has my family cropped out and I'm just... so distractingly orange next to all of them."

She posted a striking before-and-after picture to illustrate the change. "Carotenosis before and after. Left was me in December, right is me now after I stopped eating carrots every day," the caption read. The photo on the left shows her skin with a prominent, almost unnatural orange hue. The photo on the right, taken months later, shows her skin tone back to its normal shade.

Her first reaction to seeing the photo wasn't just surprise; it was alarm. "I freaked out when I saw the left pic because I thought it was jaundice. But no. I just love carrots too much," she explained.

Panda enjoys a healthy carrotCanva

The condition, carotenosis, is a harmless side effect of ingesting excessive amounts of beta-carotene. The woman noted she had been eating large quantities of carrots since the summer and noticed the change a few months later. After the "distractingly orange" photo, she stopped eating carrots in late December. It took "a little more than three months," she said, for her skin to return to normal.

She also acknowledged that her results might be extreme. "I'm sure there are plenty of variables that go into it (weight, height, age, etc.) and everyone's body is different," she wrote. "I'm naturally very pale and also short and thin, so it might just show up easier on me."

Gif of woman complaining about pale skin via Giphy

Other Reddit users chimed in with their own similar experiences. "I used to work for an organic juice factory... I had more than a few coworkers who had an orange tint," one user wrote. Another commented, "My kid went through a phase as a baby where he was only really eating orange things. He started turning orange."

Her simple advice for those who love the snack? "Just don't do it every day!"

This article originally appeared earlier this year.