Gut bombs frighten me. I have enough of a food handicap because of my line of work, but professions aside, I'm not so good with self control when it comes to eating. I've been known on more than one occasion to follow the Louis C.K. school of consumption mechanics: I don't stop when I'm full, I stop when the plate's clean, or I'm experiencing overwhelming pain.

Still, there's some appeal to mammoth dishes -- I think. They compel our inner desire to explore and conquer. They cater to our need to win.

Here are some of the "best" gut bombs served in and around Dallas. And by best, we mean biggest. Many of them taste like shit.

The Boomstick (pictured above) Internet browsers from all over the country clicked the heck out of news stories when Rangers Ballpark announced the Boomstick. The two-foot-long link may have gotten more attention than Yu Darvish. It certainly got more attention than the Japanese pitcher's namesake hot dog.

The boomstick won this year's Best, "Are You Going to Finish That?" But don't stop eating now.

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Snuffers Cheese Fries I tried to go all Man Versus Food on this one and came up way short. A large order of cheddar fries at Snuffers could feed Octomom's whole family and still provide leftovers. In fact it's so big and nasty, we asked owner Pat Snuffer to help us calculate the calories of one of these plates for our Embracing Gluttony feature. His response? Why would I do that?

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Pecan Lodge's Hot Mess What do you get when you pile everything at the disposal of a notable barbecue restaurant onto a potato the size of a football? Justin and Diane Fourton call the creation a hot mess. I call it caloric torture.

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The Extra Large "Big Meat" at Serious Pizza It looks innocuous, but that's just the camera angle. This pizza won't fit through a door frame. Serious Pizza caters to the drunk and tattooed late night crowd that walks the streets of Deep Ellum like zombies on the weekend. Trying to finish one of these cardboard pizzas sober would be worse punishment than water boarding.

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Pretty much any combo plate at Herrera's. Combo plates at Tex-Mex restaurants are nothing new. But Herrera's has so many options on their menu it can take a margarita and two full baskets of tortilla chips to choose. After running through 22 options (some of which have sub-options like 13A-C) they finally started naming the plates. My favorite is the Nora. It's got everything I need -- or think I need.

What I really require is some broccoli.