A:Answer Your basic/budget step counters are most likely working from averages and estimates. There are a couple different formulas that can be applied to "ballpark" calories burned. This is not going to be 100% accurate, or 100% specific to the person using the step counter. For most exercisers, walking 1 mile requires an average of 2,000 steps and burns about 100 calories. Given these averages, you'll burn approximately one calorie every 20 steps or 0.05 calories per step. Track your steps with a pedometer and multiply the number of steps by 0.05 to estimate the total number of calories burned. So, it works kinda like that. Just have fun with it. You are still burning calories, even if you don't know precisely how many....it's close-ish.