[Concluded] TIFU by not telling my doctor how many Tic-Tacs I eat per day [Reddit]

[leighweightacoma@lemmy.world]

TIFU by not telling my doctor how many Tic-Tacs I eat per day + 2 year update

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/DumpsterPuff

Thank you Reddit user: Direct-Caterpullar77 for compiling this story

Originally posted to r/tifu

---

Original Post 

Apr 24, 2024

So I'm absolutely fucking obsessed with the Fruit Adventure flavor of Tic-Tacs. The flavor combined with the soft smush they make between your teeth when you chew them makes my brain very happy. I've been buying them in bulk, where each container has 200 candies each, and they come in bulk packs of 12 containers. I tend to eat them by the handful while I'm working or gaming, so in a day I can easily slam through 1-2 containers.

Now keep in mind that on the nutrition label, it says the serving size is 1 candy, and is listed as having 0 calories, which I thought was awesome because I could have as many as I want!

Over the past year, I found that I gained about 40lbs, and nothing about my eating habits had changed as far as I was aware. I told my doctor about it and she was a bit worried, so she had me do a bunch of bloodwork to see if there was a reason why I gained so much weight in a short period of time. Everything came back normal. She referred me to see a weight loss doctor who would also have me see a dietician.

I had been working with the dietician for a few months now, and we have me keep a food log. I had a virtual visit with her today and during it, I was fiddling around with an empty container to keep my hands busy. She saw it and asked where I got such a large container from, so I told her about it and how I eat 1-2 of those per day. She asked why those weren't on my food tracker and I said it was because they're 0 calories so they wouldn't count.

Apparently I was very, very wrong about this. She explained to me that food companies can label something as being "0 calories" if the food's serving size contains 5 or less calories. In reality, each individual Tic-Tac actully has about 2 calories. So essentially, since each container has 200 pieces and I typically have 1-2 of those, I've been eating 400-800+ calories per day of Tic-Tacs, in addition to all the other food I've been eating - which is very likely why I've gained so much weight.

TL;DR: Didn't realize that tic-tacs weren't actually 0 calories and gained a ton of weight because I eat so many a day.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

Not3kidsinasuit: I just finished a diploma in a medical field, we were warned about people like you OP. I wish I was joking.

AngstyToddler: Reminds me of when I went to a friend's house and watched him take the pump off a bottle of spray butter and just dump it into the mashed potatoes. I asked him why he didn't just use butter or margarine and he said it was because the spray butter was zero calories. I had to explain the whole concept of "per spray" and did the math to show it had almost the exact same calories as margarine. His wife had gained about 30 lbs since they'd married the year before, and it was apparently because most of his diet hacks meant she was actually eating more calories than ever.

ETA: Remembered another one. He was buying low calorie bread, but never compared the calories to regular bread. Just assumed it was much, much less. Instead of serving her 2 slices of regular bread each morning (190 calories) he was serving her 4 slices of lower calorie bread (240 calories - slathered with "zero calorie" butter spray, of course).

skoulker: Tic tacs are funny. LESS THAN ONE GRAM OF SUGAR PER SERVING!!!!!! But a serving is like one or two and they weigh so little it’s under a gram. (Less than a gram of pure sugar is still sugar)

[deleted] .49 grams per tic tac. Under .5 grams can be considered sugar free.

kafelta: Bro ate 40lbs of tictacs

---

Edits

made to the original post

Edit 1: Just wanted to clarify that I'm aware that sugar will in fact make you gain weight (I'm not that stupid), but I never actually read the product ingredients. I assumed they must have been made with something like Xylitol or some other artificial sweetener to make them "0 calories" so it never crossed my mind to check!

Edit 2: Dang y'all are brutal lmao. But at least some good came out of it since apparently, like me, a lot of people didn't realize about the "less than 5 calories per serving" rule can legally be classified as 0 in the US. Personally I wish we could have the model they do in other countries where they list calories per X amount of grams.

Edit 3: MY TEETH ARE FINE 😂 I actually just had a dentist appointment two weeks ago. No cavities or decay, gums are healthy. Despite my candy habit I do take good care of my teeth!

---

OOP Updated

Aug 15, 2026/Same Post (over 2 Years later)

Edit 4: It's 08/15/26 and I actually forgot about this post until the other day and I figured I'd share an update. So I did stop eating the tictacs, but did find out I have a legitimate health condition afterwards. After my gallbladder removal a few years ago, I kept having issues where I felt shaky, confused, lethargic, dizzy, irritable, and sweaty shortly after eating meals, especially in the middle of the day. All I knew was that if I grazed on tictacs throughout the day, my symptoms would go away. When I stopped eating the tictacs, my symptoms came back and my doctor had me wear a continuous blood glucose monitor, which was showing readings that kept hitting the low 60s/high 50s, indicating hypoglycemia.

It turns out I developed a condition as a result of the gallbladder removal called postprandial hypoglycemia, meaning you get rapidly dropping blood sugar shortly after eating meals. They don't exactly know why the gallbladder removal causes it, but it explains why the tictacs made me feel better because it prevented those huge drops. After we figured this out, doctor put me on Zepbound in hopes that it will stop those blood sugar crashes. Thankfully it worked and I no longer need to eat candy to feel normal again! And I've been losing some of that weight I gained too. But yeah, it was a wild ride.

---

Reddit BoRU Comments of Note

Cassandracork: … did I just learn what is causing me to feel exhausted after meals from a BORU? (Had gallbladder removed last year, had issue ever since.)

TheNightTerror1987: Okay, that bit about gallbladder removal causing postprandial hypoglycemia for OOP is a bit alarming considering that he described how I feel when I eat pit foods, as I call them, (food that makes me hungry if I eat it) eating chocolate helped when I felt like that, and I've had my gallbladder out too . . .

---

THIS IS A REPOST COMMUNITY - I AM NOT THE OOP

DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS

[aeri@lemmy.world]

I think some of the blame lies on marketing.

They should close the cheats.