Balance between cheap cards and pot building with marginal hands

[dauler]

I'm having a lot of trouble balancing the two concepts of not giving cheap cards when I'm likely to be ahead and building big pots with marginal hands. I tend to be deathly afraid of giving cheap cards and thus end up building big pots with hands that are subject to reverse implied odds and end up spewing my chips on later rounds. I feel like a pussy for folding fairly large pots against cards that I can't be sure helped them, so I end up calling later streets more often than I should.

How do you guys approach hands on early streets that are likely to be best now, but a majority of the deck are scare cards for you? And how do you follow up on later streets?

Here's an example of a hand that could have gotten me into trouble on the turn/river if an opponent had called me on the flop and then gotten aggressive on later streets.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $ BB (6 max, 5 handed) converter

MP ($29.1)
Button ($24.95)
Hero ($24.75)
BB ($24.65)
UTG ($13.6)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 7[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], Q[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. Hero posts a blind of $0.1.
<font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, MP calls $0.25, <font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, Hero (poster) completes, BB checks.

Flop: ($0.75) 7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] <font color="#0000FF">(3 players)</font>
<font color="#CC3333">Hero bets $1</font>.

Final Pot: $1.75