my opinion is to just find something that works for you.... Eat Whole Foods as much as possible. I also like the rule of “don’t be weird” ...
Pretty much all of these 3.
Don't try to shoot for "the optimal diet/nutrition" straight away. You wouldn't pick up the beast expecting to press it for reps on your first go. Nutrition isn't any different, there's no magic combo + numbers + timing + books.
There's good advice from many many many people. Dan John's "eat your protein, vegetables, drink your water, sleep your sleep and walk your walks" is as simple as it gets an pretty much what is recommended by the majority.
Park the idea of "optimizing" and start "experimenting". 12 weeks to build muscles? 12 weeks to build a nutritional habit as well. 3 months of trial and error will teach you more than 1 book.
Protein is excellent for both fat loss and muscle building, find sources that don't cause you distress and you can tolerate. Find the amounts you can tolerate and go with it, then keep upping / lowering it.
Depending on your goals, try to figure out how little or how much you can get away with without swaying from your plan and goal. Find a baseline, put it on the backburner, then decorate around it. Is your recovery improving or worsening? Do you go to bed with a heartburn or thirsty? How's your energy levels? Etcetera... Eat, evaluate, adjust!
Personal experience / example:
I went crazy for years on macro tracking, chicken/rice/broccoli, protein powders, eat before working out and the lot.
I was not happy which meant it didn't work for me.
I wanted to go low carb to shred fat.
I was not happy, wasn't energised, mood swings. So I was doing something wrong. I also went underweight (50kg on a 165cm frame, while training 3-4 hours a day)
I changed again, I am now having 5-6 boiled eggs + dollop of yogurt + berries at breakfast / Beef mince + olives + carrots at lunch / Nuts + some protein powder mid afternoon / A healthy protein vegetable meal with my partner in the evening (plus, most likely, a chunk of whatever I cook for her). I'm packing muscles, I sleep great, I've lost lots of fat in the past 9 weeks, we are happy and jumpy. I train at 5:30am before anybody else wakes and bugs me. During the weekend I relax a bit more, I'll have oats with her at breakfast and let her cook 2 dinners without kicking up a fuss if the carbs to fats to protein ratio is "wrong". She knows I like my meats and fishes, so I get lots of those in huge quantities. The rest of the week I cook for myself. It's all balanced and keeps me happy.
I also had a cheeseless ham and mushroom pizza (and obviously half of hers) 3 days ago and felt like crap afterwards, but I knew it in advance so moved on with my life as usual the morning after.
All of the example / ramble above took me a good 3-4 possibly 5 years to figure out. It's all now on autopilot