Each Time Machine backup grows and grows. How do I stop this?

Hi everyone. In basic terms, let's say that my external LaCie 3TB hard drive has 2TB of data. This 2TB includes my Time Machine backup. That means that I have 1TB of free space. My last backup was one week ago (I don't keep my external HD hooked up because of travel and I don't care for so many frequent backups). Right now I am backing up, and the backup is 30GB larger than last week. THERE IS NO WAY I MADE 30GB OF CHANGES IN THIS PAST WEEK! At the most, I probably made 1GB of changes. This situation has happened before, so it seems that with each backup (every time I reconnect my external HD for the sole purpose of backing up... Again, I don't leave my HD connected so I back up manually whenever I feel like it, instead of automatic), my data seems to have grown by dozens of GB. Dozens! I'm gonna run outta space soon if this keeps up.
I've read a number of threads on this topic and checked out Pondini.org but my one question does not seem to be answered:
How do I stop my backups from growing so big when I know for a fact I did not make big changes?
This does not equate. If I made 1GB of changes (I'm guessing), then why does Time Machine back up an additional 29GB?
I'm considering ditching Time Machine and backing up totally manually, like, dragging/copying/pasting files and folders from my laptop into my external HD. At least that way I can control and understand that 2TB of data means 2TB, not: "Surprise! 2.03TB... 2.5TB... 2.75TB and mysteriously growing!"
Any help would be appreciated, please. Also, I don't know code and I can't do open-source stuff and I don't know jargon. I also don't do advanced stuff like Parallel (I don't know what that is). If you could please help a dummy like me with plain-speak, that would be beyond awesome. Thanks!
***MacBook Pro from late 2011, OSX 10.7.5, LaCie Porsche external HD 3TB***

Some good options are:
Carbon Copy Cloner
Data Backup
Deja Vu
SuperDuper!
Synk Pro
Tri-Backup
Each provides a trial version before paying.

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