Giving things up for Lent...

I was raised Roman Catholic and I have to admit when it comes to Lent aside from meat on Fridays I don't give any else up for Lent. I remember being in grade school and every year the whole school would go to church for the beginning of Lent. We would have a ceremony, and every year the priest would ask the students to raise their hands if they were giving up anything else for Lent besides meat on Fridays. I would always keep my hand down because meat was the only thing I gave up. Then aside from the church ceremony, we would be given a list of things that we didn't have to do but would supposedly help us to give up certain things for Lent, like chips, cookies, soda, watching too much TV, things like that; which I never did, and truthfully I still don't do. Aside from giving things up for Lent we would also be told to try to do some charity work. Those were always interesting because some of the things I remember seeing, I would think to myself "I can't do this stuff I'm just a kid." Some of the things I remember seeing on there were help the homeless, do some volunteer work, raise money for the homeless. I always wondered how they expected us to do some of those things, we were kids, and because we were kids we really couldn't do anything without our parents permission or without our parents. Regardless of that I would still go to church every Friday for prayer service, go to church on Palm Sunday and give up meat for 3 days prior to Easter Sunday. When I was in 8Th grade I played the Virgin Mary when we reenacted Jesus being hammered to the cross. Then many years later I graduated grade school, graduated high school, graduated college and over the years I noticed that I started stumbling when it came to Lent. There were times when I wasn't able to make it to church on Ash Wednesday to receive my ashes, at times I would forget that I wasn't suppose to eat meat on Fridays or the 3 days prior to Easter Sunday and I would go and have a double bacon cheeseburger. So here are my questions to all of you...I may have been raised a Catholic and I still believe and respect everything I've been taught and I've gone to Catholic grade school and Christian colleges and I know why we're suppose to give things up for Lent but part of me can't help but wonder how is giving up things for Lent suppose to help us become better people or better Christians for that matter? And if my stumbling has made me a sinner?