Do you have an automatic feeder for the cat? I use the Crown Majestic (search on Amazon) and it works pretty well--my cat stopped sniffing my face at 6am...
I bought the same feeder in the hopes that this would occur, but it seems my cat just can never get enough. So I run into the trade off between health (my cat's) and sanity (my own). I would still suggest the feeder to everyone to try however, it really is a well made product that could easily fix bad habits in your animals feedings.
My threshold for the number mornings the cat on a diet begins the wake-up call is rapidly approaching the point at which I get around to building some sort of time-release RFID tag access-controlled (two cats, only one on a diet) feeder.
Thanks for the suggestion. We leave food out all night, so it seems to be less about wanting to be fed than wanting (me specifically) to be up and downstairs.