Commitment Strategy Design

Commitment strategies are useful techniques in behavior change that assist in maintaining proper focus on long-term objectives against short-term temptations. With respect to health behaviors, including dieting, commitment processes provide specific ways of dealing with inconsistency, impulsivity, and emotional response. This paper seeks to establish why such strategies are useful, how they work, and their application to any client who has a history of yo-yo dieting: Commitment Strategy Design.

Why Do We Need Commitment Strategies

Commitment strategies are required because individuals sometimes fail to commit to their long-term goals and objectives due to personal conflicts, emotional conditions, and circumstances around them. Most individuals fail to sustain weight loss or other healthy measures not because they do not know how to but because they do not practice and have no self-control. Most dieters are trapped by hyperbolic discounting, prioritizing immediate gain over future benefits.

Also, emotions such as hot states and external triggers can cause one to deviate from established intentions or plans. These behaviors are countered by commitment strategies, which are triggers that make the undesirable outcomes of deviant or undesirable behaviors less desirable and the positive outcome of following the recommended behaviors more desirable (Dorotik-Nana, 2018). These strategies principally rely on the behavioral approach that makes use of rewards and punishments to adjust desirable behaviors where self-control is lacking.

How Do Commitment Strategies Work

Commitment strategies work on the underlying contingencies, punishments, or rewards to discourage one from leaving a particular goal. It operates under three primary strategies: Financial or social costs, environmental manipulation, and long-term benefits’ repetition. For instance, associating a specific fine with a lack of success at a particular task makes the final price of failure a lot higher.

Goals also act as social pressure when shared with others. These strategies work on behalf of the long-run self, which is the rational and future-oriented aspect of people’s cognition, and thus shield plans from being disrupted by the short-run self (Duckworth & Gross, 2020). For this reason, approaches like benefit reminders, reduction of distractions, and developing self-control skills are some of the most effective in ensuring prolonged behavior modification.

How Would You Use Commitment Strategies with a Yo-Yo Dieter

For a client involved in yo-yo dieting, the commitment strategies to overcome challenges include identifying the triggers, inconsistencies, and barriers in the environment. The first possibility would be to set a realistic target, for instance, to walk for 30 minutes five days a week or refrain from taking snacks late in the evening. The second possibility is a financial punishment, for example, $300 given to a friend with $30 taken away each day the client misses a walk or eats late in the evening. This entraps people due to loss aversion to encourage compliance.

Social motivation would also be incorporated: The client can write weekly posts to the support group or share goals with their family members (Fanaroff et al., 2023). Also, the client should be provided with benefit reminders, such as frequency messages, such as texting or journaling, that should remind them of the benefits of healthy practices. Actions such as taking junk food out of the house are other examples of environmental changes that would help reduce temptation. There should be a chosen referee who will monitor the process for compliance and who must be objective, truthful, and remain calm.

Commitment strategies effectively direct short-term behaviors to meet long-term goals by employing consequences, structure, and social support. It can be conducive for clients with a pattern of losing and gaining weight frequently; these clients mostly make decisions based on impulse rather than motivation. Through components like financial incentives, social responsibility, and environmental structure, these approaches identify the social causes that lead to habit relapse and offer a solution for establishing better habits that can be maintained in the long term.

References

Dorotik-Nana, C. (2018). Behavior modification (1st ed.). International Sports Sciences Association. https://online.vitalsource.com/books/BMC01S1807

Duckworth, A. L., & Gross, J. J. (2020). Behavior change. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 39–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.09.002

Fanaroff, A. C., Coratti, S., Halaby, R., Sanghavi, M., O’Quinn, R. P., Krishnan, S., Glassberg, H., Bajaj, A., Adusumalli, S., Chokshi, N., & Patel, M. S. (2023). Feasibility and outcomes from using a commitment device and text message reminders to increase adherence to time-restricted eating: A randomized trial. American Heart Journal, 258, 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2022.12.010

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Week 6 Writing Assignment:
The information covered in this week’s lecture and reading assignments will help you answer the following assignment. Your answers should be concise, complete, no less than 300 words, and typed in a Microsoft Word document. When you are finished, upload the Word document to be graded using the dropbox below.

This week’s assignment:

• Why do we need commitment strategies? How do they work, and how would you use them with a client who has a history of yo-yo dieting? Please include a complete commitment strategy design.
  

  Commitment Strategy Design

Reading Assignment:
Reference & Cite:

• LMFT, C.D. M. (2018). Behavior Modification. Lionel University Content. https://online.vitalsource.com/books/BMC01S1807
  • Unit 5 Part 1 Pages 107-140