I felt getting close to burned out a couple of weeks back. So, I did little work for a few days (like an hour or so while traveling - sketching UI or strategizing something) to keep my streak going. Being able to skip a day and come back to streak or use a shield or hearts to revive a broken streak, is definitely the next step for you to figure out so that its still motivating and yet accounting for health concerns.

As far as cheating goes - people are already doing that by posting non-shipping todos.