The holidays bring excess amounts of good food to the table. You might feel encouraged or required to have a taste of everyone’s appetizers, main dishes and after-dinner treats. As a result, your waistline may begin begging for mercy as the pounds pile on. Thankfully, you can mitigate those extra calories by working exercise into your holiday season festivities. You might even be able to encourage your friends and family members to participate in the following activities with you.

Squash

Squash is a high intensity racquetball game played in a small indoor court. You can play this game alone or with a friend. The walls have markings that indicate where players can hit the ball to keep it the playing field. The tiny squash ball whizzes around the court, ricocheting off the walls, as you scramble to hit it into the marked areas. A series of games are played to find the winner, so you could be running up to an hour at a time to complete your session. Even though the exact amount of calories burned during exercise depends on your weight and effort, you can expect to burn more than 500 calories each hour you play squash.

Dance

With all of the holiday parties going on during this season, it’s quite easy to find somewhere to dance the night away. You will use all of the muscles in your body to sway to and fro while grooving to the beat. As a result, high intensity dances will burn up to 500 calories per hour, while slow dancing burns nearly 250 in the same time period. Switch up the types of dancing you do to give your body a chance to rest in between fast, complex moves. You can easily convince people around you to start dancing by throwing caution to the wind and having a good time. You may even find yourself dancing for hours, eliminating the need for additional exercise sessions for the rest of the week.

Punch

Although it’s awesome to see relatives again after a long year, the holidays can sometimes be filled with tension and strife. As a result, you might find yourself needing a bit of stress relief before heading out to the next party on the itinerary. Eliminate your frustrated feelings while burning calories by utilizing a punching bag. Pummeling the bag with your fists can burn hundreds of calories an hour, depending on the amount of effort you exert. Put all of your weight into each punch to really work your arms, back and legs and release tension stored throughout your body.

Walk

Everyone loves to walk and talk after a nice meal. Convince your friends and family to walk through the neighborhood and enjoy the sights. You won’t even notice the hours slip by as you catch up with your loved ones during the walk. For every mile you walk, you’ll burn up to 100 calories, quickly negating all of that good food you ate.