It's the wee hours of the morning and you're in one of two states: Starving because you've just finished a late shift or afflicted with the munchies after a night of over-indulgence.

Suddenly, up ahead you see that familiar white, purple and reddish sign, and your late-night dining quandary is solved. You, friend, have made a run for the border and found Taco Bell.

But how hard will that run hit your waistline? Tex-Mex food, that genre most similar to what Taco Bell serves, is not exactly health food, being highly bean-meat-and-cheese oriented. This makes for tasty munching, but can easily result in extra notches being taken in your belt.

So let's take a look at the menu and see where you might find something to satisfy your hunger without regretting it for weeks.

Taco Salad Temptation

One of the most popular full-meal items on the Taco Bell menu has long been the taco salad. In fact, Taco Bell could easily be held responsible for such items appearing on the menus of places that otherwise have nothing remotely Tex-Mex on their menus, such as Wendy's.

At a quick glance, this looks very much like what would happen if you asked Homer Simpson to design a salad. You've got lettuce, sure, but it's topped with taco meat, beans, sour cream and cheese and is served, in a truly diabolical touch, inside an edible, deep-fried tortilla bowl.

Just stop and think about that for a moment: edible dinnerware. Why hasn't this concept caught on?

Well, it could be because that deliciously crunchy bowl is the source of a huge percentage of the calories and fat in the nutrition totals. With the bowl, the Fiesta Taco Salad with the standard taco meat will hit you with a belt-busting 840 calories and 45 grams of fat. Order it without the bowl -- yes, you really can! -- and you drop the counts to 470 calories and 24 grams of fat.

Eating the bowl is one of the best parts of the taco salad for many people, but try it a couple of times and you'll find you really don't miss the crunch all that much. If you really do, crumble a handful of baked tortilla chips over the top of the salad and mix them in.

Pick Your Taco

Thanks to Taco Bell, a huge number of Americans believe that tacos originally came in a crispy shell. For many late-night diners, the crispy Taco Bell taco -- often by the half-dozen -- is the ne plus ultra of munchie satisfaction. And, at 170 calories and 10 grams of fat, one or two tacos won't hit you that hard. The half-dozen, though, might require some additional treadmill time.

For something more filling and flavorful, try the Spicy Chicken Soft Taco which, with 170 calories and only 6 grams fat, will give you more bang for your nutrition bucks.

Common sense should tell you that double layers of almost anything are dangerous from a nutrition standpoint, and that's the case here, with the Double Decker Taco Supreme laying on 370 calories and 17 grams of fat.

While none of these numbers look all that large, remember that we're talking about tacos here. When's the last time you were satisfied with just one taco?

Which takes us to our final leg of our journey.

Big, Bad Burritos

Unlike tacos, burritos are generally intended to be a meal. Two tacos is a snack, but two burritos is a pig-out.

At Taco Bell, your choices might be a bit confusing until you look at the raw numbers. The Grilled Stuft Burrito is a great example. You see "grilled," which might indicate a more healthful menu choice. However, "stuffed," no matter how you spell it, is a big red flag. Here, it's indicating the presence of 680 calories and 30 grams of fat.

A far better -- and actually tastier -- choice is the Steak Fiesta Burrito, with 390 calories and 14 grams of fat. If you prefer chicken, you'll end up with 10 more calories and one less gram of fat. Heck, you might even throw in a taco or two, just for old time's sake.

You can still have your occasional "run for the border" without running up the pounds, you just need to choose wisely and remember that it's an occasional indulgence, not a way of life.