Any person, if they want to be closer to Hashem will try to do the appropriate amount of fasts required do correct the damage caused by sin.

Depending on one’s physical ability, one can fast in the winter, when the days are a shorter. One can do half-day fasts: one fasts 168 half-day fasts to accomplish 84 regular fasts (for the sin associated with young men). One can even eat in the morning, before daylight (provided one decided so before going to bed), to ease the pain throughout the day.

Say a person did the sin associated with young men more than three times (each time requires 84 fasts), he would be required to fast 252 times. Nowadays, we don’t have the physical capacity to fast that much.

So, what do we do?

Give tzedoko, lots of it. 18 “gedolim poilish” per fast day.

But that’ll add up to more than chomesh (20% of one’s income)?! The possuk says not to squander away more than a chomesh?!

It’s no worse than paying for one’s physical health, after all we’re redeeming our soul.

The idea is we’re giving as much tzedoko as we can to reflect G-d’s infinite mercy. B”H.