To my experience this is only true if you totally max yourself out when exercising. An alternative is to do light (ish) exercise every day. Makes getting totally ripped pretty much impossible, but it makes staying fit easy, because it's easy to build a habit around and it's easy to make fun.
A streak strikes me as a very different thing than a habit. Habits aren't hard to pick up after a break, streaks are. I have a hard time to figure out what it means for someone to "purposefully break a habit", except in the context of bad habits of course (eg a smoker trying to not smoke for a day). This is my whole point I guess, if you manage to make exercise a habit and not a streak (by making it fun, and feeling good, and having space for it in the daily calendar), then you can stop worrying about 0 days altogether and just do it every day except when you don't.
> by making it fun, and feeling good, and having space for it in the daily calendar
That's definitely the healthiest approach to it. I agree with you it won't matter if you stop for a while or not, as it was done for pleasure in the first place.
