This isn't from my book of Lenten sermons, but from Introduction to the Devout Life.
In the chapter on "Mortification," the saint first encourages fasting "a little" more than the minimum:
If you are able to fast you would do well to fast a little more often than the Church demands, for besides elevating the spirit, subduing the flesh, practising virtue and acquiring greater merit, this serves to maintain our mastery over greediness and to subject our bodily appetities to the law of the spirit... Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays are the days on which the early Christians most often practised abstinence, so you may choose some of these days as fast days... according to your confessor's advice.
But then the rest of the chapter is a caution against overdoing it. In particular:
...[W]ant of moderation in fasting, taking the discipline, wearing a hair shirt and so on, renders the best years of many people useless in the service of charity...
The flesh is subdued both by fasting and by work; if your work is necessary and useful to God's glory I would rather you suffered the labour than the fasting, as more in accordance with the mind of the church, for our duty to God and to neighbor dispenses us even from fasts of obligation. One has the hardship of fasting, the other of serving the sick, visiting those in prison, hearing confessions, preaching, helping those in need, praying and so on; all of which are more valuable than fasting, for they not only subdue the body, but also bear excellent fruit. In general, it is better to over-strengthen than over-weaken the body; we can always curb it when necessary, we cannot always restore it when we want to.
I read this not so much as a caution against fasting -- because excessive fasting is rarely a problem today, although excessive scrupulosity and overthinking about fasting often is, if my FB feed is any indication. The saint does recommend fasting "a little more often" than required, after all, "if you are able to fast."
No, I read this more as an encouragement to consider the ordinary performance of one's duties as an opportunity for fasting, a chance to "rend your heart, not your garments" and do one's daily work in a spirit of mortification.
Those of us whose primary work is the care and education of children will have no problem seeing that our work is "necessary and useful to God's glory." We know that such work is inherently dignified.
Those of us who work for a paycheck probably have a variety of experiences. Some occupations are obviously ordered as a whole to the good of the human person, even if certain individual tasks seem to take away from it. Laborers in other occupations may find it harder to see the channel by which their labor may be made useful to God's glory, but (with the exception of inherently harmful work -- work that aims to degrade and damage the human person) there is some good to be harnessed in even the smallest and most menial tasks, if we can only put our hearts in the right place.
Today I'm going to eat when I need to, but I'm also going to try to do my work without complaint and without wasting time. This doesn't mean no online recreation, but it does mean I'm going to set a timer on it.
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