Comment by ashark

I think it helps to visualize a soda container as filled with M&Ms or some other candy. You'd feel like a disgusting lard-ass if you had a big cup full of M&Ms with your meal and kept getting refills on it, right? In fact it'd probably seem like such an obviously-bad idea that, even if you really liked cups full of M&Ms, you'd only have them occasionally, as a treat, and you'd still feel kinda guilty about it.

Look at soda that way, and it gets way easier to turn it down. It's basically candy. When you have three glasses of it with a meal (remember when US restaurants didn't do free refills? That was probably a good thing) that's gross and obviously terrible. When you even have a little with most meals it's still gross. A rare treat? Fine, go ahead.