Is calorie burn on ELLIPTICAL only based on heart rate?

[rosein]

Or does my fitbit also takes number of steps into calculation? I noticed that when I'm not moving my hands and keeping them on stationary handlebars fitbit doesn't record any steps. Can the number of steps recorded on elliptical affect the total calories burned during this workout? Or is it only about my heart rate?

[SunsetRunner]

Hi @rosein - and welcome to the forums! Here is the official answer from the Help pages. You can read more about it here. 

HOW DOES MY FITBIT DEVICE CALCULATE CALORIES BURNED?

Fitbit devices combine your basal metabolic rate (BMR)—the rate at which you burn calories at rest to maintain vital body functions (including breathing, blood circulation, and heartbeat)—and your activity data to estimate your calories burned. If your device tracks heart rate, your heart-rate data is also included, especially to estimate calories burned during exercise. The number you see on your Fitbit device is your total calories burned for the day. 

[Heybales]

It's only about HR.

Because of the very different methods that can be used to do an elliptical - there are no good formulas that have been found in studies yet to calculate calories from strides per min, to distance (what does that even mean?).

Only more reliable method are the machines that give a true watts reading like your exercise bikes.

But on bikes the human efficiency is well studied and known, so calories from watts produced is easy.

But on elliptical the way a person does it can vary greatly, so efficiency is not the same. So same watts being produced could have taken very different amounts of human energy - so even that's not great.

Of course HR has it's own caveats too for when it's a best estimate, and when it's going to start going off the rails.

Oh - normally the devices are looking for impacts of the steps despite the arms moving, but elliptical is so smooth there is usually no step impacts, so free moving arms is fooling it. Of course the distance to those "steps" is useless for calculating calorie burn for the formula it using for walking a certain distance.

So HR is the best there is for elliptical.

Unless you got a watts reading. And if you input correct weight, machine estimate of calories may be using the watts already. If no watts shown, then who knows what made up formula they are using.

[emili]

hey there. When you are holding on to anything, bars, handles, shopping cart, your steps are not calculated properly unless you have a tracker that is not a wrist based one. On the elliptical, it is usually one step for every two up downs. I do find that the best metric for effort is calories burned. You can periodically check your wrist while you are working out to ensure your HR reading is keeping up with your effort and you are in fat burn or better.