Instant change upon applying Lumetri color, but not making any adjustments

When in the color workspace doing color correction, if I make any change in Lumetri color, the image changes in the project viewing window (getting more contrasty). I.e. if I click on Lumetri color panel and add .1 exposure, instead of the image just getting .1 brighter the whole image changes and gets more contrast. The contrast, blacks, whites, shadows, highlights, curves, etc. all stay the same, nothing is changing, but the whole image changes. When I turn off that lumetri color effect via the fx button in the effect controls window, it goes back to the less contrasty image that I had before. Basically, it's adding some sort of effect whenever I do anything in Lumetri, that is different from what I am adding.

It was shot on a Nikon Z6 in neutral color picture. Screenshots attached for reference. 

Editing on Imac Pro

macOS Mojave 10.14.3

GPU Radeon Pro Vega 56

in Premiere pro version 13.1.5

Not using proxies or anything like that