It is important to make sure that there are no medical problems causing this. Some things that people find helpful include cutting down on caffeine, carbonated beverages, alcohol, or acidic foods. Another important thing is to stay well hydrated. Often times having very concentrated urine makes people have more urgency. For example, if somebody has urge incontinence and tries to cut down on fluids to cut down on leakage, they may actually end up with more urgency.
Some people also have urgency because they have spastic pelvic floor muscles.
This condition can be diagnosed by a health care provider and treated. Most of the studies that are trying to find out risk factors for incontinence do show a link between overweight and incontinence. It is not clear why this is but might be related to the increased abdominal pressure that happens from being overweight. Having said that, at this time there is only one good study which has carefully looked at the effect of losing weight on resolution of incontinence. They did see a decrease in leakage of urine after the women lost over 100 pounds.