Time Machine - data to back up keeps on increasing as it's backing up!

Apologies if this has been asked and answered before, but I couldn't find anything on it when I searched.
I want to install Mavericks on my iMac, currently running 10.8.5, but before I do so, I want to do an up-to-date Time Machine backup.
I already had Time Machine set to back up to an external 1TB drive, but after several versions of backups over the past few months, and also me adding and creating several GBs of new data on my iMac, Time Machine ran out of space to do any more backups to the external HD.
So to be safe, before the Mavericks install, I wanted a fresh new up-to-date backup of all my data. I did a quick erase of the external HD to clear the space on it, and also deleted quite a few GBs of unnecessary data on the iMac. After that, I had 999GB of free space on the external HD and just 850-ish GB of data on the iMac to backup. So I set my Time Machine to run, and watched it start backing up... 1GB of 850GB... 2GB of 850GB... 3GB of 850GB... And so on. All going as expected. No problems there.
So then I leave my Mac to get on with it, as it estimates it's going to take several hours.
After the estimated time has passed, I come back to see if it's done, but to my surprise, the progress bar is now reading something along the lines of 850GB of 900GB. Where did the extra 50GB come from to take it up to 900GB?
Worse still, as I sit and watch it continue, it progresses along the lines of 860GB of 920G  (60GB remaining), then 870GB of 940GB (now 70GB remaining), then 880GB of 960GB (now 80GB remaining) and so on.
So not only is the total amount increasing for some bizarre reason, but it's also increasing faster than it's backing up!
What on earth is going on here?!
It may be worth mentioning that I originally tried doing this with approx 900GB of data to back up to the external 1TB disk, and a similar thing happened, but when I came back to check on that a couple of hours after it was due to complete, I came back to see an error message stating that Time Machine could not do the backup because it needed an additional 100mb of space. Just 100mb, that's all.
After that error, I removed approx 50GB, way more than 100mb, and got my data down to 850GB before starting this again. But the same thing is happening. The total amount just keeps on increasing and increasing and increasing as it progresses!
It's worth noting that I am not doing ANYTHING else on my Mac whilst this is running that would take up data / disk space. No apps are running at all.
Can anyone please tell me what's going on here, and more importantly, how can I fix it?
Thanks!

Thanks for the suggestions.
I am aware that you can turn Time Machine on and off completely via the preferences, but that basically defeats the purpose of having a "set and forget" backup. Especially since Time Machine specifically includes an option to not backup when on battery power.
I'll try the "full reset" option described in the link to see if that helps.

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