Is Lent about self-denial?

I grew up around evangelical church leaders who were hardcore
about spiritual fasting, sometimes going a week on just water or 40 days on
just fruit juice. (I never made it more than a day.) When I started running in mainline
circles, I was thrown by the way people used the word "fast" to mean giving up
chocolate or beer or television.

So I have some sympathy for Jeffrey MacDonald's call for recovering serious self-denial as a
Lenten discipline. I also appreciate Tim Suttle's point about constant satiation, the status quo
for Americans of any degree of privilege:

The sad result of satiation is
that we lose any sense of mystery and wonder. Satiation dulls the imagination
and healthy spirituality loses out to the pursuit of the ultimate experience.
In our culture satiation is much easier to achieve than character. Lent can be
the antidote.