Does reference to Texture count on RAM usage of device?

Hello,

I need to understand of how unity handles memory usage since I have a 2d game which uses about 200 mb according to the instruments tool from xcode, which is more than what I want to too much in my opinion.

In my heirarchy I have many UITextures so I thought of having no texture attached but have a variable of type Texture instead and assign myUITexture.mainTexture = myTexture;

But I am not sure if I did help memory or still its the same.

I need to know if the reference of UITexture will count on memory (RAM) or if any variable having a reference to an image will count on memory?

Also is using Resources.Load the solution to this?

Please if there's a link or an another forum post that I didn't find would help much!

Thanks in Advance.