Lent has figured as a fasting discipline all my life.  We were a large family – five birth children and several foster children. Our late father was a Cuddesdon-trained priest from the rather austere and extremely devout Anglo-Catholic tradition of the post-war years. Every Lent, we fasted, prayed and went to church with a fury. Lent was far more important in our young lives than Easter or Christmas.

In addition, as a growing child, the time of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness was among the most compelling aspects of his ministry. I understood temptation, identified with his struggles, saw the holiness in the outcome. I wanted to learn how to do that, to be like that. To control my desires for power, wealth – and food. To get to grips with my materialism, hedonism and pride.

So I loved Lent, because within its disciplines, within the example of Jesus, was the answer to battling and defeating my own inner demons.

In our house, Lent meant toast without butter and jam for breakfast, no lunch on Fridays at school – a trial as it was big 'games' day – no sugar any day if at all possible – and sparse, simple food for dinner. On Fridays, that meant fish and a few green veg.  (I respect Muslims so much for Ramadan, when it is not just Fridays but every day they must fast, to an even more extreme regimen than this.) And of course, no chocolate at all except on Mothering Sunday. 

As a typical wanna-be-nun AngCath teen all those years ago, Fridays were soon not enough. Before long, I was going without lunch every day of the week except Sunday, and then on Fridays, eating absolutely nothing at all. By the age of around 22, I was managing to drop to around six stone, with a small moustache and periods stopped, during Lent and after Lent, while ballooning up to something like my present weight of 10 stone in the months between.

And then this pattern stopped being defined by Lent and found a season all of its own.

I wouldn't say I was ever chronically anorexic, an over-eater or bulimic.

But with Lent starting this year on the third day of Eating Disorders Awareness Week it would not be right to talk about giving stuff up – and 'stuff' for Christians is normally food – without making that small confession. 

And this of course represented a move for me, because Lent went from being primarily a spiritual discipline to one embraced in order to lose weight, to save money, or simply to 'look good'.

As a result of that, ever since my mid-20s, in spite of trying every year, I've never been able to 'succeed' at Lent at all. I've been able to 'give' things – time to church, money to charity – but not to forsake chocolate for more than a few days, let alone fast for Friday lunch. 

So I'm writing this now in the hope of understanding better what to do, and rediscover a Lent more like that exemplified by Christ. Maybe this will make the Lenten fast work better this year.

Here are the 10 things I've tried – and failed – to give up for Lent.

1. Chocolate: This stuff truly is the devil. It is like a drug. I really hope that admitting here, publicly, that I am powerless over it and that it seriously could make my life unmanageable – I can't afford a whole new wardrobe – will help me rediscover how to turn to God and be restored to sanity, at the very least for Lent. I no longer do what I did as a child – eat chocolates I find in the house that have been bought for someone else because I simply cannot stand for them to sit there uneaten. But I still, to my shame, find it impossible to buy someone else a box of chocolates without buying one for myself as well. Even in Lent. 

2. Alcohol: I tried for several years in my early 20s to give up alcohol for Lent, without success. I finally stopped drinking in the month of May, many years ago. One day at a time, I've not picked up a drink since. God has without question been there, helping, throughout my sobriety. But I never managed to do it when trying to do it for Lent - perhaps because then, I was trying to do it for God, and not with God.

3. Spending money on unnecessary things. Going into a shop and watching the cash register being rung up – normally for some item of clothing that will look beautiful once I'm two stone lighter and just ends up in Oxfam a decade later – is some kind of weird adrenaline fix. It does feel like chocolate tastes. The spending gets much worse whenever I'm not eating chocolate and losing weight and suddenly that size six figure seems achievable. My church practises a Lenten discipline of saving 20p pieces each day. Monetising the giving up does help in cutting down the spending. 

4. Food: One problem with food is that, unlike alcohol, you can't live without it. Among recovering alcoholics, there are many useful sayings, such as, 'I can't live with it, can't live without it,' or 'One is too many, 100 is not enough.' With food, you have to take the first bite in order to live,  even knowing that this will lead to the next 100 bites that will never be enough. Fasting – just not eating at all – became one way for me to control this appetite. Dare I call it gluttony? Horrible word, horribly true for me. Fasting is great because for me it creates its own drug-like adrenaline high, its own fantastic sense of power.  And that has always been my problem – taking that power unto myself and not recognising it as the temptation to sin it is. I now understand the value of the Lenten fasting tradition our parents tried to impose on us and that I grew to resist – first by overdoing it, then by not doing it at all. Going without one meal on Friday – knowing you can eat again, later that day but not until then – that is really hard. This is the discipline I'm going to aim for this year. I'm not even ready to try again with chocolate but missing lunch on Friday – and giving what I would have spent to the Big Issue seller at our local Underground station – feels achievable. 

5.  Temper: 'If you lose your temper, someone else will find it,' our mother used to say. 'I don't care,' I would retort. 'Don't care was made to care, don't care was hung. Don't care was put in a pot and boiled till she was done,' she would reply. It is a few months now since I seriously lost my temper. Just the fact of getting older, and being less at the mercy of the hormones of youth, has been a great help in this, for which I thank God. In the same way it helps with money to think of 'giving it away' to keep it, rather than not spending it, so with temper, it helps me to think of positively doing the opposite. Be kind, be loving, be good, be nice. 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.' 

6. Envy: Again, getting older has helped beyond measure. With all the 'seven deadlies', giving them up for Lent is of course a good idea, but it is not enough. Along with lust, gluttony, anger and the rest, these are things that need to be worked on constantly.

7. Work: A friend of mine helped start the 12-step fellowship, Workaholics Anonymous. Work is not a sin. Our AngCath household could be very Protestant when our parents felt like it and we certainly imbibed the Protestant work ethic along with the Mariology and the fasting and all the saints. But like everything else, work can be used as an escape. Do I really need to spend those extra two hours in the office? Or am I trying to avoid my husband because I let him see my jealousy when another woman dared speak to him the other day? Lent is a time of checking motives, of self-awareness and ultimately, God-awareness. How did Jesus deal with Satan in the wilderness? Work, like everything else, should be done for the right reasons. 

8. Starbucks: My husband cut down on Starbucks for a year and put the money he would have spent in a jar every time he didn't go. He saved over £1,000. I couldn't do a year – I'm even writing this column in Starbucks and few others have such decent wifi – and attempts to do it for Lent have always failed in the past, mainly due to needing the wifi for work. But that might be another goal worth pursuing for this year. I would save the money I would have spent and give it to charity. Then there's Prêt, Café Nero and all the rest: If Starbucks goes, the others will have to as well otherwise it's cheating. Not sure I can manage 40 days without the chocolates in Café Nero though. 

9. Pokémon. Today is Pokémon Day. Yes, 27 Feb was the day that the original red and green games came out in the 1990s and some people's lives - including mine - changed for ever. It's actually never occurred to me to give up Pokémon for Lent, especially not now so many churches are gyms and Pokéstops in Pokémon Go. At level 33 and nearly 34, and with my nice Chansey evolved only today to a lovely fat 'amazing' Blissey, I'm afraid that giving up Pokémon Go for Lent is just too big an ask. And I've just got to have one of those party hat Pikachus to give the one in the Santa hat someone to play with in my dex. Convince me that Pokémon Go is a sin, and maybe you'll change my mind, but til then...Go Polycarp!

10. Pride: I'll save the worst, and the hardest, for last. This is perhaps the one that most needs giving up, and is the most impossible to do. The 'sackcloth and ashes' of Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, are a tangible reminder of the inescapable fact spelled out in Genesis – from ashes we come, and to ashes we will return. The ashes are tangible – 'pride' is harder to grasp as a physical essence. Satan knows its power, and it is possibly his most effective weapon, subtle in its blandishments, deathly as a funeral. Even humility can be prideful, when done ostentatiously. 

Giving things up for Lent, when done for the right reasons – in emulation of the truthfulness and humility of Christ – is one of the great gifts the Gospels have given to the world. This year, I'm going to try and do a bit better than the past and have a proper go with at least one of these 'giving ups', probably the Friday fast. And then I'm going to give up the fasting after Lent. I'll let you know how it goes.