Is anyone doing this the “non real food” way? I’m thinking it may be easier to start like this. What shakes do you have in that case? I’m in the UK.

I did for the first few weeks to break myself in.
I initially used Boots own brand Slender Shake in the way that the Newcastle site recommends, three times a day with skimmed milk plus home made soup (they have a lot of good recipes on their site) or a stir fry. It was an easy way to slip into things, no thinking, and less chance of slipping little extras onto every meal. I selected the chocolate flavour as I have always found that it is one of the few flavours that actually taste as it should when in ‘artificial’ foods.
The following week I dropped down to 2 meal replacements, and then 1 in week 3. Mid week three I stopped the replacements altogether as I was well organised – soup on the freezer, and had got portion sizes and not finding it hard to stick to the 800 cals/day.
I also tried Oatwell – which I also got from Boots, lower calories (120) if you use skimmed milk, but higher protein. I used it for breakfast and the other 680 cals over the day. I suspect I should have used it with full fat milk and that would have taken it up to the 200 cals for a meal replacement. It was okay.
This approach worked for me as a way of starting – I agree with Michael however, that it is best during the 8 weeks to get used to cooking the right food and find out how it will work in the long run. So try it for a couple of weeks.
I had to order both through Boots online and get delivered to a Boots store as none of my local stores had them available.
I have lost 12lbs in 24days which is above what I was expecting.