One of the ways that we pray as Christians is by consciously choosing to go without. That is in a way what Jesus did when he went off by HImself. That's the point of fasting and abstaining from eating meat, which Catholics do on Fridays during Lent. Again, it's not an arbitrary self-flagellation. It's a small (and by comparison relatively painless) remembrance of the fasting that Christ himself did, not to mention his Passion and Death.
It also serves to remind us that we do not really need anything except God. He is the highest good. We may have necessities to sustain our earthly lives, but if we never consciously choose to go without them even for a short time, we run the risk of thinking we can never do so, and thus give them a central priority in our lives that only God can occupy. We are called as Christians to be absolutely dependent on absolutely nothing except God.
By consciously choosing to go without we force ourselves to focus on God, because now that the distractions are gone, we need to focus on God in order to make the process less tiresome and uncomfortable. When we go without, it leaves a bit of emptiness inside, which God then has the opportunity to fill. St. Paul says Christ "emptied himself"**. And when He spent 40 days fasting in the desert+, well, you don't get much emptier than that. And it doesn't get much more painful than that. But neither is there ever more room for God.
If we want to have a relationship with God, we have to make room for Him, like Jesus did. We have to go off by ourselves, we have to get rid of the distractions, we have to let go of all the things we think we need right now, and we have to let ourselves go hungry. He can't feed us if our stomachs are full.
* Mark 1:35, Matt 14:23, Luke 5:16 etc.
** Philippians 2:7
+ Matt 4
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