Is Fasting from Food So Hard?

Finally, it seems quite odd that in our society—a society in which people gladly and freely spend huge sums of money for diets, most of which recommend that one refrain from red meats and dairy products—fasting is not more widely embraced. How odd that a Jenny Craig consultant or diet guru or physician will tell us to refrain from eating meat or cheese or butter and we will gladly embrace—and pay large sums of money for—his or her advice, while when the Church offers the same advice [at “no cost”] we tend to balk, as if we were being asked to do the impossible.

Source: "Why Fast Before the Nativity?," Orthodox Church in America Website, accessed December 8, 2013, http://oca.org/questions/dailylife/why-fast-before-the-nativity.