Objective-C How to network with REST API effectively without too much data usage?

So I have an app that uploads videos/images to the server which uploads the video/image to amazon s3, and stores the video in the database. For some reason, on every GET and POST request it consumes about 1 to 3 MB of data plan. I am trying to figure out how it consumes so much? Even if I only post a mere 40 KB image or retrieve a 40 KB image, it uses 1-2 MB still. What are some ways to fix this? Why would it be using so much memory to transfer 40 KB image?

PS: I am currently using AFNetworking, more specifically AFHTTPRequestOperationManager

Thank You