It looks like I'm having a conversation with myself here but that's ok - I figured out my problem and wanted to post the solution for you guys.
I'm going to assume that everyone here is experiencing this problem with music only. I paid very close attention to what songs were being "updated" every time I synced. It turns out that all of my problematic songs were from CD's that I had ripped myself (each of these specific albums were causing my problems) During the process of copying the mp3 files over from my Windows PC, it looks like something got corrupted in the ID3 tags - that's why these songs were constantly being updating upon syncing. It took a few hours but I had to write down each and every song that was being updated (it was a bit easier for me because as long as I recognized one or two song names, I could easily determine which album they were from). Once I determined which songs were causing the problem, I updated the ID3 tags for each and every one of them.
For me, I had around 220 songs that would always update so that was about 15-20 albums. That made it a bit easier because I could just update the entire album at once - all I did was bulk change the information in one field (you can just pick a field that you're not really using). I used the "Album Artist" field and just put the name of the Artist in that field. What this does is cause iTunes to "reset" the ID3 tag information for each of those songs upon syncing with your device (iphone or ipod). Once I did that for all of my problem songs, there were only 2 more songs that were still updating every time I synced. Since updating the ID3 tags on those songs wasn't helping, I deleted them from itunes completely and brought in fresh copies. That took care of the problems with those 2 songs and now I don't have this issue anymore!
I can't say with 100% certainty that this solution will help everyone here but it certainly worked for me. It's a bit time-consuming (especially if you have a few hundred songs that are giving you problems) but it's well worth the effort if this problem annoys you as much as it annoyed me.
Let me know if you guys have any questions and I'll help as best as I can. Good luck!