It is amazing how many thousands of things we can use to fill the void. What good is it to give up one if you replace it with any number of these? It seems it would be better to give up everything.
I suppose this is why our Lord withdrew into the desert, fasting for forty days. There was nothing there to fill the void and yet how could He have felt the void, for surely that is the result of man disunited from God? Yet He suffered as we, so He must in some way have experienced it. Elsewise the temptations of the devil would not have been in the least tempting to Him. Clearly He would never have given in to them, but He must have found them alluring at least in His humanity.
The allurement of earthly pleasures is what draws us to them and keeps drawing us to them, even when ultimately we find them unsatisfying. No matter how many times we indulge, we always want more.
Taking forty days to let go of one of those ways of indulging might mean only that we replace it with another. Yet if we are able to replace that pleasure instead with prayer or good works, we may find a new habit that deepens into joy through the struggle. That sacrificial practice forges our souls, forming us into a new creation, and allowing God to work within us.
Then too we take one small step nearer to the God who is already so near to us.
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