Hi, yes you do not need meal replacements.
If you look at the first 3 month thread of mine there are posts i there that gives an idea of what I ate. Basically (and I still drop back to this when I want to drop a few more) this is it
Breakfast: 15-20g porridge made with semi-skimmed milk (full fat would give you more calories and water would give you less).
Lunch: Handful of cold roast meat (cooked at home so I know it is not full of junk) - need the protein to stop me from eating muscle. Handful of raw carrot sticks, 4 raspberries, 6 blueberries (lol I was so precise with this), 8 hazelnuts and 6 walnut halves (I always kept the hazelnuts (for the mono unsaturated fat and arginine) but swapped around the walnuts for other nuts although walnits are great for the omega-3). The nuts for me are important as they provided me with the fat I needed as well as many other minerals and nutrients.
Dinner: This varied but I would try and fit in with the family but just eat a small amount.
Hunger - Well when this struck it came down to discipline and lots of tea and coffee (black of course)
I estimate that I would probably have a little more than 800 calories a day but I was also doing about 400 calories a day in additional exercise so needed the extra. My weight loss was generally a good 1 to 2 lbs per day and after a few months I upped the quantities a little and slowed the weight loss down and just did this until I reached about 4.5 stone down. At this point I started experimenting with what and how much I could eat for several months and increased exercise further. I am around 6 stone down now but that fluctuates up and down in a 8 lb range (ie I over-indulge for a bit and then under-indulge for a bit)
I would say that nuts are the cornerstone of my diet even today. When I have a mixture of all types (raw of course). BTW just before going to bed (I mean in the way up stairs) I would run up and down the stairs between 10 and 20 times just to wake those muscles up and soak away any bg/glucon stores slushing around over night so that I would have to be fat burning all night long
Hope that helps
A
