Is my cat hungry or just fat and greedy?

Alright so for context my cat is actually fat, like she's overweight and I've been recommended to put her on a diet before at a vet visit once before.
I use to feed her way to much, and even recently I tried getting her a new food bowl that I thought would help, but just ended up feeding her more food because she could reach into the top of it and make the food come out.

Well I did end up getting her a new automatic feeder that goes off a few times a day and puts out a the right amount of food that a cat her size is supposed to eat, it's just spread out throughout the day. So in the morning and at night she gets most of the food and then in the afternoon she gets a little and then at midnight she gets a little bit.
But she does seem to hang around her food bowl quite a lot now, even meowing at me and looking at her food bowl. I know she wants food, but I can't tell if she's actually hungry or if she's just used to having an excess of food and she's just being dramatic.
I hate to think that she's actually hungry and I'm just making her go hungry. But like I said, she's very fat and needs a diet and to start eating the right amount of food now.